!92o J Recent Literature. 165 



While in no way reflecting upon the accuracy of Mr. Cory's work we 

 should have preferred rating all of these, no doubt perfectly natural divi- 

 sions, as subgenera. 



Our contention is that with the present rapid increase of generic names 

 our nomenclature is being rendered more and more unintelligible. While 

 the separation of any group into subdivisions indicating its phylogenetic 

 development is most praiseworthy, why inject this into the namis of the 

 species involved, when it can be indicated just as well by the use of sub- 

 genera, leaving the nomenclature undisturbed? Here we have fifty-seven 

 species or subspecies which most ornithologists with some knowledge of 

 neotropical birds would recognize under the name Siptornis, but fifty-six 

 of them now appear under names that are unknown to the vast majority 

 and unless some vernacular name or synonym is appended we should have 

 trouble in finding out what an author, who used them, was writing about. 

 Mr. Cory has adopted a praiseworthy plan of trying to preserve the name 

 Siptornis in the new names which he has coined but this is not often at- 

 tempted and too often names of similar etymology apply to entirely unre- 

 lated groups. 



This comment as has already been said is nob directed agiinst Mr. Cory 

 but against a general practice the merits of which should be very carefully 

 considered by present day systematic ornithologists. — ■ W. S. 



Chapman on New South American Birds. 1 — Students of the neo- 

 tropical avifauna will be pleased to learn, from the appearance of this paper, 

 that Dr. Chapman has completed his service in the American Red Cross 

 and is back again at his studies of the rich South American material ob- 

 tained by various expeditions sent out by the American Museum of Natu- 

 ral History, in the years preceding America's entry into the great war. 

 The fifteen forms here described as new are as follows: Microsittace ferru- 

 gineus minor (p. 323), Corral, Chile; Upucerthia dumetoria hallinani (p. 

 324), Tofo, Chile; U. dabbenei (p. 325) Tafi del Valle, Argentina; Cin- 

 clodes fuscus tucumanus (p. 326), same locality; Leptasthenura punctigula 

 (p. 327), Sarmiento, Argentina; L. andicola peruviam (p. 327), La Raya, 

 Peru; Siptornis urubambensis (p. 328) Machu Picchu, Peru; S. punensis 

 rufala (p. 328), Tafi del Valle, Argentina; PseuioMoris uropygialis con- 

 nectens (p. 329), La Raya, Peru; P. olivascens sordida (p. 330), Ticara, 

 Argentina; Atlapetes canigenis (p. 330), Torontoy, Peru; Diglossa mysta- 

 calis albilinea (p. 331) Machu Picchu, Peru; Oreomines binghami (p. 331), 

 same locality; Tangara cyaneicollis gularis (p. 332) Candamo, S. E. Peru; 

 Amblycercus holosericeus australis (p. 333), Incachaca, Bolivia. 



They are described with the author's characteristic care and detail with 

 frequent comparison with related forms. — W. S. 



1 Descriptions of Proposed New Birds from Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. By 

 Frank M. Chapman. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XLI, Art. V, pp. 323-333. Sep- 

 tember 1, 1919. 



