480 Correspondence. Loct. 



The Supposed Types in the Lafresnaye Collection. 



To the Editors of 'The Auk': — 



Dear Sirs: — The last number of 'The Auk,' Vol. XXIII, pp. 351-353, 

 contains a review of our paper on the Passeres Tracheophones in the Paris- 

 Museum. Some criticisms referring to our statement about the supposed 

 types in the Lafresnaye collection (now in Boston) necessitate a few re- 

 marks of ours. 



First of all, we should like to say that we never thought of denying the 

 existence of types in the Lafresnaye collection, for we are — as every 

 ornithologist ought to be — well aware of the fact that Lafresnaye de- 

 scribed a good many species "without any association with D'Orbigny" 

 the undoubted types of which are certainly preserved in the Museum of 

 the Boston Society of Natural History. Moreover, it is evident from 

 what we said in the introduction to our study, that the remarks to which 

 Dr. Allen (I. c. p. 352, note) took exception, relate only to those species 

 which were described by Lafresnaye and D'Orbigny in their joint papers 

 in the 'Magasin de Zoologie' for 1837 and 1838. With regard to these, 

 there is no doubt that the examples in the Paris Museum are to be con- 

 sidered as the actual types, as will be shown in the following lines. 



Dr. Allen's supposition that not many of them were indicated as such 

 by the authors of the species they are alleged to represent is altogether 

 erroneous. On the contrary, nearly every specimen of D'Orbigny 's 

 collection — as far as the mounted birds are concerned — bears, on the 

 bottom of the stand, the note "type de la description 1. c." in D'Orbigny 's 

 own handwriting, and in every particular instance, the exact locality, 

 date of capture, number of the collector and the Latin name under which 

 it was mentioned in D'Orbigny 's writing, are carefully indicated. 



On the other hand, it appears that the so-called "types" of Lafresnaye 

 and D'Orbigny in the Boston Museum have been labelled as such not by 

 Lafresnaye himself, but by Verreaux, 1 and that many of them are without 

 any indication of locality 2 and collector. Dr. Allen informs us that it 

 was Jules Verreaux who catalogued the Lafresnaye collection, and adds 

 that he was "an excellent ornithologist, capable of doing the work with 

 proper discrimination through previous familiarity with its contents." 

 We are sorry to say that the work does not give him much credit as it 

 must have been executed in a rather cursory way. This will be illustrated 

 by the following instances. 



In the 'Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History,' Vol. II, 

 1889, p. 243, Dr. Allen declares Synallaxis frontalis Pelz. to be synonymous 

 with S. azaroz D'Orb., basing his conclusions upon three specimens in 



JCfr. Salvia, Ibis, 1874, p. 321. 



2 This is suggested by Dr. Allen's remark on two specimens of Cinclodes (Bull. 

 Amer. Mus. N. H., II, 1889, p. 89). 



