INTRODUCTION IX 



older one cited, I have left my manuscript unaltered. This will explain 

 also the fact that The American Ornithologists' Union's "Check-list of North 

 American Birds" is often cited from the fourth edition (1931) and its Sup- 

 plements that have appeared in "The Auk," rather than from the fifth edition 

 (1957). 



Birds named by ornithologists of the modern period have rarely required 

 special research, beyond, on occasion, tracing the identity of some obscure 

 type locality or correction of erroneous published data. This has, however, 

 seldom been true of those named during the nineteenth century, when stand- 

 ards had not yet been firmly established. Information on many of the 

 specimens acquired through the early exploration of unmapped western 

 North America has been obtainable only by laborious examination of gov- 

 ernment documents, biographies, diaries and journals, primitive maps and 

 charts (sometimes compiled by dead reckoning), study of archival materials 

 in the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, comparisons of 

 handwritings, correspondence with colleagues in museums at home and 

 abroad, and other techniques of historical research. I have had the advan- 

 tage of access to numerous unpublished notes of the late Charles W. Rich- 

 mond, who first in the Division of Birds understood the importance of 

 isolating the type specimens from the general collection and who recorded 

 museum tradition derived through Robert Ridgway from Spencer Fullerton 

 Baird. 



While the national collection of birds came into existence in 1850, when 

 Baird arrived in Washington and deposited his private collection to become 

 the nucleus of what would grow into one of the world's great collections, 

 many of the specimens recorded in the pages to follow are of earlier date 

 than 1850. The oldest of our types is that of Corvus brachyrhynchos Brehm, 

 the Common Crow of the northeastern United States, which, given a name 

 in 1822, was obviously collected earlier. The invaluable material from the 

 famous United States Exploring Expedition was collected in the years 

 1838-1842, but only much later transferred into the national collection. 

 Similarly, the types of birds named by John James Audubon, John Kirk 

 Townsend, and others of their group were collected prior to the foundation 

 of the national museum, eventually to reach us as part of Baird's initial 

 donation. 



Among the many types of particular historic interest now preserved in 

 Washington are, possibly, the last surviving of those collected by John 

 Richardson and his companions during Sir John Franklin's second land voy- 

 age (1826-1827) across northwestern Canada; the majority of those named 

 by Titian Ramsay Peale, ornithologist of the United States Exploring 

 Expedition; the mysterious "sixteen new species" from "Texas," named by 

 Jacob Post Giraud, Jr., in the rare privately issued folio of 1841 (see 

 Muscicapa texensis Giraud) ; and most of those that resulted from the gov- 



