1 68 Recent Literature. 



tuallv repeat the history of several others which tor a long time evaded 

 the closest search, like Coturriiculus lecontei (Aud.), the type specimen of 

 which was lost, and a second example not obtained until 1869, or twenty- 

 six years after the species was first described and figured, while now it is 

 represented by a greater or less number of specimens in all the principal col- 

 lections in this country ; or Centronyx bairdii (Aud.), which passed through 

 even a worse experience, one eminent ornithologist having the good for- 

 tune to obtain more than 75 of this species in less than a year after he had 

 'ventured to foretell' that 'a second specimen would never be found'!" {op. 

 cil., pp. 8, 9). But the cases are hardly parallel, since these and Sprague's 

 Lark, which may be included in the same category, were found as soon as 

 their habitats in the unexplored West were reached by later ornithologists, 

 while the habitats of the other species are the thickly-settled portions of 

 the East, long since thoroughly explored. Despite their being so " clearly 

 described and accurately figured," ornithologists still guess at their generic 

 affinities, and the opinion has more than once been hazarded respecting 

 several of them that they were really based on some immature phase of 

 plumage of common species. Some of these, as the Carbonated War- 

 bler, are not so easily dismissed, since they need be scarcely less rare 

 than Kirtland's and Bachman's Warblers, and some of the other now 

 recognized Helminth op ha gee. to elude capture altogether. Again, as 

 has been suggested to me by a well-known ornithologist, hybridity may 

 well come in for consideration in this connection, especially in reference 

 to Cuvier's Kinglet, since the fact of hybridity between different species of 

 Oscines is now well established. In regard to Audubon, it may be noted that 

 10 species, now admittedly exotic, were given by him as North American, 

 with definite localities assigned to them. To have excluded all these "lost" 

 or apocryphal species, and also all the (so far as now known) extralimital 

 species from the list proper, and to have given them in supplementary lists 

 only, would have thrown more sharply into relief the extent of our exact 

 knowledge of our ornis than is the case in numbering them consecutively 

 in the principal list.* Eliminating the species not certainly known to 

 have been taken north of Mexico, together with the " lost" species of 

 Audubon and Wilson, reduces the list of registered forms from 928 (this 

 number includes four given in the " Addenda " to the catalogue) to 88S. 



In regard to the nomenclature of the list, it is needless to say that the 

 system is trinomial, and its merits and advantages are thus tersely set 

 forth by our author : -'The adoption of trinomials for the designation of 

 nascent species — a direct result of the synthetic method of study which 

 has supplanted the former analytic treatment of the subject — has caused 

 perhaps the greatest difficulty encountered in the compilation of this 

 catalogue, it being in many cases very difficult to decide whether a given 

 form should be treated as having passed the "varietal stage,' and therefore to 

 be designated by a binomial, or whether it is yet incompletely differentiated, 



* It should be here stated, however, and as will be more fully noticed later, these 

 discriminations are all duly and prominently set forth in the " Appendix" of the list. 



