68 Netson, New Birds from Mexico and Guatemala. Auk 
Jan. 
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 Mexico from 6000 to gooo 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 megalopterus from near 
Jalapa, in Vera Cruz. Wing 90, tail 81, bill 21, tarsus 27. 
Mr. Ridgway has had the opportunity of examining Lafresnaye’s 
types in this group and has determined that true Campylorhynchus 
pallescens of that author is a South American species, while the 
Campylorhynchus pallescens of Baird’s Review of Am. Birds, I, p. 
to1, and of the Biologia Cent.-Am., Aves, I, p. 69 is really 
Campylorhynchus, megalopterus 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 /e/eodytes 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 megalopierus by its larger size and by the . 
greater clearness of its colors, a/tico/us showing but slight traces 
of the pale wash of dingy fulvous that obscures the colors of the 
other. 
Alticolus is closely related to megalopterus, 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. 
