68 Nelson, New Birds from Mexico a?id Guatemala. \ {^.w 



Heleodytes alticolus, new species. Mountain Wren. 



Type, No. 142855, U. S. Nat. Museum, Dept. Agric. coll., $ ., Huitzilac, 

 Morelos, Mexico, December 28, 1892. Collected by E. W. Nelson (Orig. 

 No. 608). 



Distribution. — The Pacific slope of the Sierra Madre in the States of 

 Morelos and ]V[exico from 6000 to 9000 feet 



Description of type. — Crown and forehead grayish brown; back and 

 sides of neck streaked with white and blackish brown ; back and rump 

 irregularly barred with white and blackish brown, the feathers being 

 bordered with dull ashy gray slightly shaded with fulvous; two middle 

 tail-feathers with inner webs uniform dark ashy gray ; throat and breast 

 white with large, rounded, blackish brown spots; flanks, abdomen and 

 under tail-coverts barred with dingy whitish and blackish brown. 

 Dimensions : Wing 97, tail 89, bill 25, tarsus 27.5. 



The following dimensions are of an adult male megalopterns from near 

 Jalapa, in Vera Cruz. Wing 90, tail 81, bill 21, tarsus 27. 



Mr. Ridgvvay has had the opportunity of examining Lafresnaye's 

 types in this group and has determined that true Campylorhynchiis 

 pallescens of that author is a South American species, while the 

 Ca7npylorhyuchus pallescens of Baird's Review of Am. Birds, I, p. 

 1 01, and of the Biologia Cent.- Am., Aves, I, p. 69 is really 

 Catnpylorhynchiis 7negaIoptenis Lafr., which inhabits the mountain 

 slopes of Vera Cruz. 



This clears up the ground in such a way as to leave it quite 

 certain that the specimens of Heleodytes obtained by me in the 

 heavy oak forest on the mountain slopes of northern Morelos 

 represent an undescribed species. The specimens from the type 

 locality are the only ones of this bird at hand. It may be dis- 

 tinguished at once from megalopterns by its larger size and by the 

 greater clearness of its colors, alticolus showing but slight traces 

 of the pale wash of dingy fulvous that obscures the colors of the 

 other. 



Alticolus is closely related to megalopterns., and I should be 

 inclined to regard them as geographical races of the same species 

 were it not for two considerations : First, my specimens show no 

 signs of intergradation, and second, the ranges of the two forms are 

 isolated from one another by a broad belt of unsuitable country, 

 where neither occurs. Under these circumstances I have no 

 alternative but to treat the two as species until data are at hand 

 to prove them otherwise. 



