BULLETIN 



NUTTALL OENITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Vol. III. JANUARY, 1878. No. 1. 



NOTE ON PASSERCULUS BAIRDI AND P. PRINCEPS. 

 By Dr. Elliott Coues, U. S. A. 



The Nuttall Ornithological Club gratefully acknowledges the 

 liberality of Messrs. T. Sinclair and Son, the well-known lithog- 

 raphers, of Philadelphia, through which the opening number of 

 the third volume of the Bulletin is illustrated with a hue colored 

 plate of Baird's Bunting. The figure was drawn under my direc- 

 tion by Mr. Edwin L. Sheppard of Philadelphia, and represents the 

 adult male as I have often observed it singing during the breeding 

 season. The plate was engraved and printed in colors by the 

 Messrs. Sinclair, in the interests of science, and the whole edition 

 was generously presented by them to the Club. 



No full-length colored figure of this species has hitherto been 

 published since Audubon's original, which was taken from a speci- 

 men in worn plumage, as the type now preserved in the Smith- 

 sonian attests, and is far less characteristic than the Sinclair plate. 

 The colored head in Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, as well as the 

 wood-cuts on page 531 of their work below cited, were all from that 

 same specimen. In fact, no second specimen was known until 

 1872, when Mr. C. E. Aiken took, in El Paso County, Colorado, a 

 young bird, which was soon after described as a new species, Cen- 

 tronyx ochrocephalus. The following year he obtained another ; 

 and during the summer of that year great numbers were taken in 

 Dakota by Mr. J. A. Allen and myself, and also in Arizona by Mr. 

 H. W. Henshaw. Since that time the species has been well known 

 and illustrated by an abundance of specimens. 



