FAMILY TROCHILIDAE 343 



pp. 2-3) includes the following information from Dr. J. K. Merritt, 

 who presented the specimens : 



"It was also in the Autumn of 1852, while stationed in the district of 

 Belen, Veraguas, New Granada, that I obtained several specimens of 

 this diminutive variety of the Humming-Bird family. 



"The first one I saw, was perched on a twig pluming its feathers. 

 I was doubtful for a few moments whether so small an object could 

 be a bird, but upon close examination I convinced myself of the fact and 

 secured it. Another I encountered while bathing, and for a time I 

 watched its movements before shooting it, — the little creature would 

 poise itself about three feet or so above the surface of the water, and 

 then quick as thought dart downwards, so as to dip its miniature head 

 in the placid pool, then up again to its original position, quite as 

 quickly as it had descended. 



"These movements of darting up and down, it would repeat in rapid 

 succession, which produced not a moderate disturbance of the water, 

 for such a diminutive creature. After a considerable number of 

 dippings, it alighted on a twig near at hand, and commenced pluming 

 its feathers." 



It is pertinent to review some early published reports of this bird 

 as they include an error in locality. Salvin (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 1867, p. 154), in an account of collections received from Arce, dis- 

 cusses the characters of typical albocoronata, but indicates merely 

 that his material is from Veraguas. In a later paper (idem, 1870, 

 p. 207) he lists his specimens as from Cordillera del Chucu, which is 

 accepted as correct. The locality is not found on the map published 

 with Salvin's paper, but is one, that from some of the species listed 

 of known Caribbean range, must have been on the old trail that led 

 from Santa Fe on the Pacific slope over a low pass to Mineral in the 

 Atlantic side lowlands. Salvin and Godman in their final publication 

 (Biol. Centr.-Amer., Aves, 1892, p. 268) through oversight gave the 

 records of Salvin, 1867, as from "Santiago de Veraguas," a locality 

 far down in the lowlands on the Pacific side, an obvious error, but 

 include the report of 1870 on the same material correctly as from 

 Cordillera del Chucu. Part of the older specimens in the British 

 Museum that I have examined have the erroneous locality "Santiago 

 de Veraguas" in Salvin's handwriting. 



It is probable that Microchera albocoronata parvirostris (Law- 

 rence), found on the Caribbean slope of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 

 may range into western Bocas del Toro. Dr. Eugene Eisemmann in- 

 forms me that there is a specimen in the Havemeyer collection at 

 Yale taken near Suretka, Costa Rica, only a few kilometers from 

 the boundary with Panama. A male of parvirostris in the American 



