Notes on Humunng- Birds. 425 



not separable from, the birds of the Andes, wliile close by, in 

 Cayenne, we meet with a different form. 



P. longirostris I consider very closely allied to P. moorei, 

 but separable not only by the colour of the rump and upper 

 tail-coverts, the latter being rusty buff with two narrow dark 

 l)ars (instead of bronze-green with rusty buff edges!), but 

 also by its longer wings and longer bill. The female seems 

 to be a little smaller, as is the case in P. super ciliosus. 



P. longirostris was first described in the ' Echo du Monde 

 Savant' for 1843, no. 45, p. 1070. The only available 

 collection of the ornithological papers in that magazine is 

 the one belonging to the library of the Zoological Society of 

 London. There I have looked up the original description 

 of P. lonyirostris, and found that it was described as coming 

 from " Guatimala/' and that the article is by Mons. De- 

 lattre alone. The locality and the sentence, " Queue etagee, k 

 pennes noires, bordees de roux,'' clearly show that the name 

 P. longirostris belongs to the southern form, with deep rusty 

 buff edges to the outer rectrices. This form is spread all 

 over Central America south to North Colombia (Baranquilla, 

 Remedios, Santa Marta), while the West-Ecuadorian bird, 

 as shown below, is my P. haroni. I cannot detect any 

 differences of importance between skins from the different 

 parts of Central America, but Mexican specimens, of which I 

 have a series from Chilpancingo and Jalisco, differ very 

 conspicuously in having the outer rectrices tipped with white, 

 instead of rusty buff. The tail is 3 to 5 mm. longer, the 

 middle line of the throat lighter and therefore more con- 

 spicuous. These characters, especially the white edges to 

 the outer rectrices, are not to be found in any of the very 

 numerous skins from Central America which I have ex- 

 amined. Therefore I have no hesitation in separating the 

 Mexican form, which I name 



— Phaethornis mexicanus, sp. nov., 



the type, from Dos Arroyos in Chilpancingo, being in 

 Mr. Rothschild's Museum. The two skins from " South 

 Mexico" in the British Museum seem to point a little 



SER. Vll. VOL. 111. 2g 



