SOME TENNESSEE BIBB NOTES. 195 



twenty-eight belonged to the warbler family. 

 In this list it was curious to remark the 

 absence of the Nashville and the Tennessee. 

 The circumstance is significant of the com- 

 parative worthlessness — except from a his- 

 torical point of view — of locality names as 

 they are applied to American birds in gen- 

 eral. Here were Maryland yellow-throats, 

 Cape May warblers, Canada warblers, Ken- 

 tucky warblers, prairie warblers, palm war- 

 blers, Acadian flycatchers, but not the two 

 birds (the only two, as well as I remem- 

 ber) that bear Tennessee names.^ The 

 absence of the Nashville was a matter of 

 wonderment to me. Dr. Rives, I have since 

 noticed, records it as only a rare migrant 

 in Virginia. Yet by some route it reaches 

 eastern New England in decidedly handsome 

 numbers. Its congener, the blue golden- 

 wing, surprised me in an opposite direction, 

 — by its commonness, both in the lower 



1 Both these warhlers — the Nashville and the Tennes- 

 see — were named by Wilson from the places where the 

 original specimens were shot. Concerning the Tennessee 

 warbler he sets down the opinion that " it is most prob- 

 ably a native of a more southerly climate." It would be 

 a pity for men to cease guessing, though the shrewdest 

 are certain to be sometimes wrong. 



