ae | OBERHOLSER, Hastern Subspecies of Sitta carolinensis. 181 
ing,” he writes. ‘Everything carries back the mind to a remote 
age; to a time when Cicero and Virgil were hardly known in Italy; 
to a time compared with which the time of Politian and even the 
time of Petrach is modern.” As a Latinist he must mention the 
“Very badness of the rhyming monkish hexameters;” while con- 
fessing that “there is something attractive to me”’ in this “very 
badness’’ — as there is also in the “ queer designs and false drawing 
of the pictures.” The final comment of this busy brain is of special 
interest. After “an hour spent in making out” the Biblical his- 
tories of the atrium, the historian concludes: “They amused me 
as the pictures in very old Bibles used to amuse me when I was a 
child.” 
The future peer of Rothley dipped into a vast number of books 
in his omnivorous-reading, boyhood days. It seems a safe in- 
ference that some at least of his “very old Bibles” were of the 
Cotton type or model which furnished in the thirteenth century 
the designs for the Genesis and Exodus mosaics of the atrium of 
San Marco — and doubtless also for general Bible illustration of 
the day. 
CRITICAL NOTES ON THE EASTERN SUBSPECIES OF 
SITTA CAROLINENSIS LATHAM. 
BY HARRY C. OBERHOLSER. 
THE name Sitta carolinensis carolinensis 1s now applied to the 
White-breasted Nuthatch of the northeastern United States and 
southeastern Canada. Recent investigation, however, shows that 
the Florida form must be called Svtta carolinensis carolinensis; 
and since none of the names for eastern birds of this species is found 
to be available for the northeastern race, the latter must be given 
anew designation. Therefore the eastern races of Sztta carolinensis 
will stand as below: . 
