482 Correspondence. [oct. 



stein from a Cayenne specimen in the Berlin Museum where it has been 

 examined by one of us. Our remark ' : " quelques-uns de ces types, perdus 

 au milieu d'une masse de specimens, ne portaient que les indications du 

 voyageur, sans nom scientifique " refers to some of D'Orbigny's skins on 

 the labels of which no Latin name was to be found. 2 Among the Tracheo- 

 phonse there were but four such specimens which, however, we had no 

 difficulty in ascertaining to be the types of Anabates ruficaudatus , A. 

 gutturalis, A. certhioides and Upucerthia nigrofumosa. Our reasons for 

 these identifications are fully explained /. c. 



It remains to say a few words about the birds described by Lafresnaye 

 alone, and by O. des Murs, which are dealt with in our paper. First, it 

 must be remembered that the whole collection of Count Castelnau's 

 expedition to South America was deposited in the Paris Museum where, 

 consequently, all the types of the ' Voyage dans l'Amerique du Sud ' 

 remained. It is, therefore, rather strange that those of Dendrornis weddellii 

 Des Murs {not Lafresnaye) should be in the Boston Museum, yet Mr. 

 Elliot (Auk, 1890, p. 169) goes even so far as to say: "I do not mean to 

 argue that D. weddellii is not represented in the Paris Museum, but I doubt 

 very much if any specimen there is rightly labelled as the type of the spe- 

 cies." This statement is made on account of there being two mounted 

 birds in the Lafresnaye collection labelled as types! Against this, we have 

 to say that the Paris Museum possesses two adult birds of D. weddellii 

 which are marked by Des Murs himself — the actual describer of the species 

 — as "les types de la description dans l'ouvrage de M. Castelnau, p. 46." 

 There can, therefore, be no question whatever as to which specimens are 

 the real types. It does not seem to be at all certain that the examples in 

 the Lafresnaye collection were obtained by Castelnau's expedition, and 

 unfortunately Mr. Elliot does not inform us about this all-important point. 



Of the species described by Lafresnaye alone three, namely: Dendrexe- 

 tastes devillei, Dendrornis dorbignyana and Xiphocolaptes simpliciceps need 

 no further comment, being accredited in the original descriptions to the 

 Paris Museum. Sittasomus amazonus is said to have been discovered by 

 Count Castelnau. Moreover, on the stand of both specimens in the French 

 National Collection, there is a note from Des Murs' hand: "cet exemplaire 

 portait de la main de M. de Lafresnaye Sittasomus a mazonus Lafr. Type." 

 The same applies to Dendrornis obsoleta muUiguttata (Lafr.). 



With regard to Nasica guttatoides, we refer the reader to the account 

 in the Meinoires Soc. Hist. Nat. Autun, XIX, p. 99, where our reasons 

 for considering the specimen from the Castelnau expedition as the type, 

 are explicitly stated, and we cannot admit that it has only been incidentally 

 mentioned by Lafresnaye, as the locality Lorette is given in the first 



1 Bull. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris, 1905, p. 373. 



2 D'Orbigny's original labels are, with a very few exceptions, still attached to the 

 skins. 



