28 ) 



REMARKS ON A SUPPOSED NEW BRITISH TIT 

 OF THE GENUS PA BUS. 



BY 



P. L. SCLATER, d.sc, f.r.s. 



Mr. Howard Saunders, in his " Manual of British 

 Birds/' inchides live species of true Parus in the British 

 Avifauna, namely, Parus tnajur, P. ater, P. palustris, 

 P. ca'ndens, and P. cristatus. 



Dr. Hartert, in his "Vogel der palaarktischen Fauna," 

 in which trinomials are employed, uses for these five 

 species the names Parus major neivtoni, P. ater britannicus, 

 P. palustris dresseri, P. cceruleus ohscurus, and P. cristatus 

 scoticus,^ on the ground that all the British Tits are 

 subspecifically distinguishable from their continental 

 rej)resentatives. But to these five species of Parus he 

 adds a sixth, " Parus atricapillus Meiiischmidti,'' making- 

 it a subspecies of P. atricapillus of North America. It is 

 about this form that, as I think, more information is 

 specially required, as its reception as valid would add a 

 new (and very interesting) species to the British List. 



The so-called Parus atrica^nllus Meinschmidti seems to 

 have been first indicated by Herr Kleinschmidt in 1898, 

 as a subspecies of Parus montanuSj though he did not assign 

 any name to it, but simply called it " Parus mmitanus 

 subsp. nov. England" (" Orn. Mon.," vi., p. '34). 



In his memoir on the Paridw, published in the " Orni- 

 thologisches Jahrbuch for 1900 " (Vol. XL, p. 212), Mr. 

 Hellmayr gave the name Parus tnontanus Meinschmidti 

 to this form, of which he had received for comparison two 



* Dr. Hartert writes the subspecific name as scot/cci, but I cannot 

 agree to use false concords. Latin having been universally adopted 

 as the language of science, we are bound, in my opinion, to follow 

 the ordinary rules of its grammar, 



