1(32 Brewster, Notes on Certain Flycatchers. I April 



well as certain others which I have been unable to verify and for 

 this reason have omitted — were pointed out by Baird, in 1858 

 (Birds N. A., 1858, pp. 194, 195) and they have been restated 

 more or less fully by innumerable subsequent writers. It is simply 

 a case of renaming a bird which was accurately distinguished 

 nearly forty years ago and has since passed current as a valid 

 form but to which the name of the very bird from which it was 

 intended to separate it has been inadvertently applied. 



Baird apparently did not have the Audubonian specimens before 

 him when he made the comparison of trailUi and pusillus above 

 referred to. At least he does not allude to them in the text nor 

 are they included in his tabular lists. The series of what he con- 

 sidered to be true trailln comprised nine examples, of which one 

 came from New Hampshire, seven from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 

 and one from Mexico. The Carlisle birds were all taken in May 

 and were unquestionably migrants on their way to northern New 

 England or New York. Hence it is evident that his impressions 

 of traillii were based on material which did not really represent 

 that bird. 



I must confess to a certain sense of relief that, as has been 

 just shown, the responsibility for the above separation rests 

 mainly on shoulders other and broader than mine ; for while I 

 honestly believe it to be based on intrinsically sound characters, 

 the differences between the two birds in question are, after all, 

 so slight and so difficult of verification without the aid of large 

 series of specimens for comparison that the identification of 

 individual specimens by descriptions alone is an almost hopeless 

 task. This, however, is by no means a novel condition among 

 Empidoiiaces, for this puzzling group includes several forms which 

 are positively known to be distinct species, but which in the 

 dried skins cannot always be distinguished with either ease or 

 certainty. 



The respective breeding ranges of E. traiUii and E. t. aliiontm 

 cannot be mapped at present with entire precision, but I have had 

 no hesitation in referring to the former all the breeding specimens 

 that I have examined from the Mississippi Valley south of the 

 42nd parallel of latitude, and from North America at large west 

 of the Plains, including skins from Fort Resolution on Great Slave 



