2o8 Faxon, Abbot's Drawings of Georgia Birds. Yuu 



Plate 97. — Leconte's Sparrow (Ammodramus leamteii) . This 

 bird .also was known to Abbot and drawn by him about forty 

 years before it was described by Audubon. The next observer 

 after Abbot who had the luck to meet with it was Maximilian, 

 Prince of Wied, during his journey up the Missouri River in 1833. 

 It was not until 1858, however, fourteen years after the species 

 was described by Audubon, that Maximilian's account was pub- 

 lished. 1 After a careful description of the specimen obtained, the 

 Prince adds the following story of its capture, which gives one 

 such a vivid idea of the elusive habits of the bird as to merit quo- 

 tation : " I obtained a single specimen of this northern species 

 near the middle course of the Missouri. The way in which the 

 little bird crept about, just like a mouse, in the grass and under 

 the bushes was remarkable. In fact, several of our party mistook 

 it for a mouse. It was surrounded ; yet, though unable to escape, 

 it could not be forced to fly. It slipped quickly from one cover to 

 another, while we all strove to catch it. When this was finally 

 accomplished, I found that the supposed mouse was a little bird 

 unknown to me. - ' 2 



Ten years after Maximilian's capture of this specimen Audubon 

 rediscovered the species on the upper Missouri and for the first 

 time described and figured it in the seventh volume of the ' Birds 

 of America,' p. 338, 1844. 3 A quarter of a century then elapsed 

 without further tidings of Leconte's Sparrow. Audubon's type 

 was lost, Maximilian's was on the other side of the Atlantic, and 

 the record of it overlooked. Certain ornithologists even began to 

 doubt the existence of Leconte's Sparrow. Then a single speci- 

 men (a very bad one) came to light in the Smithsonian Institution, 



1 Journal fur Ornithologie, VI, iS^S, 340. 



2 This specimen is now with the Maximilian collection in the American 

 Museum of Natural History of New York, according to Mr. J. A. Allen (Auk, 

 III, 1SS6, 490), who does not appear to be aware that it was described by 

 Maximilian in 1S58. 



3 Audubon's type specimen was shot on the 24th of May by Mr J. G. Bell of 

 New York, who accompanied Audubon on his Yellowstone Journey. Maximil- 

 ian, through a curious misunderstanding of Audubon's narrative, says that 

 Ammodramus leconteii has been taken in the State of New York in the mouth of 



May .' 



