Todd-Carriker: Birds of Santa Marta Region, Colombia. 35 



serious inaccuracies in the altitudes he assigns for his collecting sta- 

 tions in the Sierra Nevada, and in the localities as they appear on his 

 labels. For instance, all his skins taken at Bonda bear the label 

 " Santa Marta," which would be very misleading to anyone not know- 

 ing the exact circumstances. As a matter of fact, none of his skins 

 thus labelled can be used in determining the local distribution of 

 species, since they were admittedly collected anywhere from near sea- 

 level up to 6,000 feet on the slopes of the Horqueta, and therefore in 

 two distinct life-zones. Similar inaccuracies are evident in other 

 cases. Pueblo Viejo, where his first work in the Sierra Nevada was 

 done, he gives as having an altitude of 8,000 feet, while as a matter 

 of fact it is only about 2,000 feet above the sea, and we are left to 

 conjecture whether or not his specimens may not (some of them) 

 have come from higher up on the surrounding mountain slopes. The 

 same question arises with reference to other of his localities in this 

 region, and is later discussed more in detail. In fact, in the case of a 

 number of alticoline forms the ranges he gives differ radically from 

 those worked out by the junior author, and too much dependence nat- 

 urally cannot be placed on such records. 



In the course of his work Mr. Brown took (as nearly as can be de- 

 termined) two hundred and forty-five species and subspecies, of 

 which no less than sixty were eventually described as new by Mr. 

 Bangs, as material for comparison became available from time to 

 time. Many of these were new names for forms already recorded 

 from the region by Salvin and Godman, but others were peculiar, 

 characteristic, heretofore unknown birds. Mr. Brown's collection, 

 indeed, contained as many as one hundred and fourteen forms not taken 

 by Simons, but out of this number there still remain only five resting 

 solely on the authority of his specimens, namely, Ncocrcx colombianus, 

 Aramidcs axillaris, Scrpophaga cinerea cana, Mimus gilvus melanop- 

 terus, and Vermivora pinus. Of the sixty new forms described from 

 Mr. Brown's material thirteen appear to have been based on insufficient 



speaking thus plainly not from personal motives, but with the hope that 

 other collectors may be led to do more thorough work in the difficult field of 

 the American tropics, where so many trying situations and adverse conditions 

 confront the collector and make it so hard to secure a full representation of 

 the avifauna and to accumulate thoroughly reliable data on their life-his- 

 tory and distribution. — M. A. C, Jr. 



