68 Tiiic Wilson Ijulletin — No. 63. 



be based upon error; at any rate his specimen was not saved. 

 Of him Cones has written : " Hie loved warmth, color, action ; 

 he Iil<ed to cxaq-^'erate and 'embroider,' and make his page 

 glow like a luimmino-bird's throat, or like one of his mar- 

 velons pictnres ; he had no genius for accuracy, no taste 

 for dull, dry detail, no care for a specimen after he had drawn 

 it." Pickering's specimen obtained many years ago was 

 doubtless based upon erroneous identiiication, and Nuttall's 

 claimj to have seen the species in Massachusetts on the ap- 

 proach of winter is hardly worthy of serious consideration. 

 Dr. Emmons would have to more than meet with so great a 

 rarity before one is convinced of the correctness of his 

 diagnosis. Hay was very evidently mistaken also, although 

 the possession of the specimens should have warranted a full 

 and positive statemient, or correction, at sonne later date. Dr. 

 Brewer was the most prolific in tlie matter of records, no less 

 than four being accredited to him. In 1869 in a letter to 

 Dr. Allen', he repudiates all but the Roxbury one. " This 

 is the only one I ever knew or heard of. Ipswich I ignore." 

 And Brewer himself also destroys the authenticity of this 

 in 1874 in the following words : " In the fall of 1836, when 

 the writer resided at Roxbury, a cat brought into the house 

 a small ]<"lycatcher, which was supposed to have been of this 

 species. It was given to Mr. Audubon, who asserted to its 

 correct identification, but afterwards made no mention of it. 

 The presumption, therefore, is that we may have been mis- 

 taken." This last record a year later at Wenhami, is given 

 without annotation, and as he was well aware of the impor- 

 tance of the specimien and all the particulars appertaining to 

 the same, and yet failed to make good ; it has been received 

 without confidence. Coues suggests the probability of some 

 one of the small Empidonaces being mistaken for it by the 

 later reporters; and Bonaparte in 1850 actually identified it 

 with Empidonax flavrJenfrisf 



Audubon, Wilson and Ord, the leading American ornithol- 

 ogists of the early part of the nineteenth century, with every- 

 thing in their favor excepting absolute, visible proof, claimed 

 to have seen this bird in the flesh, and their evidence has not 



