﻿422 .SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



colidae, and that in my Remarks on the Systematic Arrangement of 

 the American Turdidaa (Proe. U. S. Nat. Mus., v, 1882, pp. 449- 

 483) I included the Turdeae, the Saxicoleae, and the Sialieae in the 

 same subfamily, Turdinse. As for the " character which really in- 

 dicates the relationship of the birds to be included in this family " 

 [Turdidae] I stated that " the peculiar spotted first plumage of the 

 Turdidae is a very striking feature, and its coincidence with booted 

 tarsi very remarkable" (op. cit., p. 450). At the time of writing 

 that sentence I was unacquainted with the real primitive style of 

 young plumage which is only shown by some of the Asiatic dippers. 



In recent years the problems involved in the geographical distribu- 

 tion of the dippers has again turned my attention to that fascinating 

 group. Its geographical range is certainly quite remarkable. In the 

 Palearctic region — or subregion, if you please — the dippers flourish 

 in most of the high mountain systems, from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific, and northward it extends into the Arctic life zone whenever 

 mountain chains lead the way. In the New World, however, the 

 dippers are confined to the boreal zone of the long Cordilleran chain 

 from Alaska to the Argentine Republic. They are unknown in 

 Greenland, Labrador, and the whole eastern mountain system. Nor 

 are dippers known from any other mountains in South America but 

 the Andes. 



In this connection I have another recantation to make. Owing 

 to our former lack of specimens of the east Asiatic dippers in the 

 first plumage alluded to above I assumed that the white undersidt 

 of Cinchis leucogaster and of the South American species C. leu- 

 conotus were not only parallel developments, but that the latter rep- 

 resented the primary young plumage which I thought I recognized 

 in the first plumage of Cinchis cinchis. In 1885, therefore, I con- 

 cluded " that the neotropical forms are most like the ancestral stock " 

 and "that South America is the cradle of the genus" (op. cit., p. 

 505). But as it now turns out, nothing could have been more 

 fallacious. 



Since those early days I have seen the young of Cinchis asiaticus 

 and C. pallasii. They are typically turdine ! Both are startlingly like 

 enormous, overgrown fledglings of Sialia except that they do not 

 have the blue color on tail and wing-feathers. The first mentioned 

 has all the feathers white with a broad dusky margin giving the 

 whole plumage a distinctly squamate appearance, and the second 

 has the light centers of the feathers of the upper surface suffused 

 with brownish. The combination of the thrush-like spotting with 

 the booted tarsi is complete! Nor is the fledgling plumage of the 

 wheatear (Saxicola) very different, except for the white on rump 



