468 Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 



as a species distinct from D. stricklandi of Malherbe as an 

 act of treason. My views upon that point were quite opposed 

 to the consensus of American opinion, which now appears to 

 have changed, and, I am liappy to say, fully recognizes the 

 correctness of my views upon that question. The apparent 

 assumption of certain ornithological rights which Mr. Allen 

 seems to claim for his countrymen is, I think, unwisely 

 suggested, and leads one to picture Mr. Allen's pen as sur- 

 mounted by a banner bearing the motto " Noli me tangere," 

 which I venture to suggest might be replaced by the more 

 charitable one, " Live and let live.'^ 



(8) Upon page 95 Mr. Allen favours ns with the follow- 

 ing : — '"^Mr. Hargitt's treatment of our Pileated Woodpecker 

 presents a curious and lamentable case. He removes it from 

 the genus Ceophloeus (the propriety of which we leave as 

 merely a matter of opinion) and places it under Dryotomus 

 of Swainson (1831), of which he considers Hylatomus of 

 Baird (1858) as a pure synonym, giving the same species as 

 the type of each, namely Picus pileatus, Linn. Although 

 Swainson placed P. pileatus under his genus Di'yotmnus, he 

 expressly gives as its ' typical species ■* Picus martins (Fauna 

 Bor.-Am. ii. p. 301), thus making his Dryotoimcs a pure 

 synonym of the genus Picus as of late restricted, leaving 

 Hylatomus, Baird, available for Picus pileatus for those who 

 wish to separate it from Ceophloeus." I may have erred in 

 using Swainson^s generic title Dryotomus for the Pileated 

 Woodpecker, and Mr. Allen is unquestionably right in saying 

 that Swainson gives P. martius as the type ; but I was no 

 doubt led into this grievous mistake by finding that the only 

 species of the genus in Swainson's work above quoted was 

 (as a matter of course) pileatus, and, secondly, that Swainson, 

 in his ' Classification of Birds,' ii. p. 308 (1837), under Dryo- 

 tomvs, omits P. martius, and gives the first of the typical 

 species as pileatus. Granting that I am in error, I fail to see 

 anything lamentable in the case. How comes it that Hyla- 

 tomus of Baird has been (according to Mr. Allen's own 

 showing) almost universally recognized as the generic title 

 ior pileatus from 1858 to 1886, and then supplanted in the 



