ae General Notes. 409 
Wrens. The nest was constructed of the usual materials — leaves, bark, 
and grasses — lined with grape-vine bark and hair, and contained two 
fresh eggs. This is, I believe, the first recorded instance of the Yellow- 
throat breeding over water, and is indeed surprising, as the nests are 
usually to be found in dense woods far from water. — WALTON I. WuHITE- 
HILL, SZ. Paul, Minn. 
The Names of Two Mexican Wrens. —It is now generally believed 
that Baird was in error when he identified his Thryothorus bewickhii leuco- 
gaster (Baird’s Wren, so-called) with the Troglodytes leucogaster of Gould 
(Proc. Zo6l. Soc., 1836, 89; Tamaulipas). This belief was first expressed 
by Messrs. Sclater and Salvin (Nomencl. Av. Neotrop., 1873, 155), who 
identified Gould’s bird with Cyphorhinus pusillus Scl. (Proc. Zodl. Soc., 
1859, 372) = Urofpsila leucogastra Scl. & Salv., 1873. Accordingly Messrs. 
Salvin and Godman (Biol. Centr.-Amer., Aves, I, 1880, 95) have renamed 
Baird’s bird Tkryothorus baird:. It appears to me that these authors, by 
beginning their history of Baird’s Wren with the ‘Review of American 
Birds,’ 1864, instead of the ‘Birds of North America,’ 1858, have over- 
looked the fact that Bazrd had Gould’s type of Troglodytes leucogaster, 
On page XV of the ‘Birds of North America,’ Baird says that he received 
from Gould about 150 species of birds, including some from Mexico, and 
on page 363 he says that Gould’s specimen of Troglodytes leucogaster 
from Tamaulipas agrees perfectly with others in the Smithsonian 
Museum, —the “others” being the identical specimens which he after- 
ward (in Rev. Amer. Birds) separated from the typical Thryothorus 
bewickit as T. b. leucogaster. Gould’s type is not included in Baird’s list 
of specimens in the Smithsonian Institution, probably because he intended 
to return it to Gould. It appears that Messrs. Sclater, Salvin, and Godman 
did not have Goulds’s type of Troglodytes leucogaster (see Biol. Centr- 
Amer., Aves, I, 78); does it, then, seem reasonable to prefer their deter- 
mination of Troglodytes leucogaster Gld. to Baird’s, who had not only 
the type of Z. leucogaster Gld. but also one of the types of Cyphorhinus 
pusillus Scl. (see Rev. Amer. Birds, p. 120)? Messrs. Sclater and Salvin’s 
opinion concerning the identity of Gould’s bird doubtless had its origin 
in the ill fit of Gould’s measurements and the incompleteness of his diag- 
nosis when confronted with skins of Baird’s Wren. Gould’s measure- 
ments do not seem to fit either Baird’s leucogaster or Sclater’s puséllus, 
for that matter : 
Length. Wing. Tail. Bill. Tarsus. 
Troglodytes leucogaster G/d. 2.75 2 1.12 “75 +33. (Gould.) 
% : ‘ 3-5 1.75 I.I 7 -75 (Sclater.) 
Cyphorhinus pusillus Sc/. { 3.5 2.05 rege (Baird.) 
4.7 2.1 2 “75 6 (S. & G) 
th ickii 1 f 
Biever oye Bevacin lencopaster 27 ene 2-I-2.4  2.1-2.55 .5-.6 .68-.78 (Ridgw.) 
Canon XLIII of the A. O. U. Code of Nomenclature provides that “in 
no case is a type specimen to be accepted as the basis of a specific or 
52 
