FEBRUARY 8, I9OI VoL. II, PP. 47-50 
PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
NEW ENGLAND ZOOLOGICAL CLUB 
ON AN OVERLOOKED SPECIES OF 4A77THUCRUS. 
BY WILLIAM BREWSTER AND OUTRAM BANGS. 
WHILE at work recently in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 
getting ready for cataloguing the fine collection of birds made in 
Jamaica, in the autumn and winter of 1890-1891, by W. E. D. 
Scott, we were astonished to find that the large series of Azthurus 
from this island contains two very different species. Our surprise 
was the greater from the fact that all modern reviewers of the 
Trochilidez have supposed this highly differentiated genus to be 
monotypic. 
The two species appear to have different and well-marked 
geographic ranges. With the exception of one young male, all of 
the fifty-three specimens of the old species, Azthurus polytmus, 
in the Scott collection, come from the neighborhood of Kingston ; 
while all of the new species, ninety-one in number, with the excep- 
tion of one young male and one female, are ffom Priestman’s 
River and Port Antonio in Portland Parish. It is probable, there- 
fore, that the two examples of the new bird from Kingston, and 
the one of A. polytmus from Priestman’s River, were stragglers. 
The differences between the two species are, in brief, as 
follows :— 
A. polytmus has a long, broad bill, in life coral-red with a black 
tip (in dried specimens, yellow with a black tip)*; the back is 
1 Asa matter of convenience, we shall speak of this bird as the yellow-billed species, because 
in the museum specimens with which one deals the bill is always of this color. 
