GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD-CREST 99 



all of which works mention the other species. Mr. Heushaw 

 places it in his List of the Birds of Arizona, bat quotes 

 me. Mr. Uidgway includes it without remark in his List of 

 the Birds of Colorado Territory, where, however, neither 

 Mr. Allen nor Mr. Trippe appears to have observed it, though 

 Mr. 0. E. Aiken found it. It is omitted from Mr. Henshaw's 

 List of the Birds of Utah. Mr. Ridgway found it in the West 

 Humboldt Mountains, and Dr. Cooi)er in the Sierra IsTevada. 

 From these data, and others that might be given, its rarity in 

 the Great Basin and southward is clearly perceived ; yet of its 

 actual presence in portions of the region drained by the Colo- 

 rado and its tributaries there is of course no doubt. It is 

 stated not to have been found south of Fort Crook, California, 

 on the w^est coast. In Mexico, it has been traced to Orizaba. 

 Details of its local distribution aside, its general range is much 

 the same as that of the Ruby-crown, including North America 

 at large. 



Yet it is upon the whole a more northerly species. This is 

 witnessed both by its apparent absence from Central American 

 localities to which the other species regularly resorts in winter, 

 and by the respective limits of its breeding and wintering 

 ranges. We have no evidence, as yet, of its nesting in the 

 Rocky Mountains at large, as the Ruby-crowa does, for the 

 southerly observations made upon it on these and other high 

 mountains of the west seem to have been during the migra- 

 tions. In the West, it has not been ascertained to breed south 

 of the Columbia, where Xuttall states that he saw it feeding its 

 young. May 21, 1835; Dr. Cooper witnessed the same thing 

 in August at Paget Sound ; and Mr. J. K. Lord found the 

 nest and eggs ou Vancouver's Island. In the East, the breeding 

 range seems to be nearly coincident with that of calendula. The 

 bird has been observed through the summer in Maine, under 

 circumstances which left no doubt of its nesting there ; while 

 Audubon saw it engaged with its young in Labrador in August, 

 and Ilerr F. W. Biideker has figured the egg from an exam- 

 ple procured in the last-named country. The close parallelism 

 in the eastern breeding range of the two species should make 

 us cautious in granting that the Golden-crest is actually absent 

 from most of the Rocky Mountain region where the Ruby- 

 crown breeds ; for it will be remembered that the evidence, 

 though strongly presumptive, remains of a negative character. 

 On the other hand, there seems to be a decided discrepancy 



