130 THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD [Vol. I 



and were shipped by them to Philadelphia, where they 

 had arrived by June, 1849 — doubtless sooner. There 

 were 1858 specimens in all, and fortunately only a few 

 have been lost. 



Verreaux prepared a manuscript-catalogue of the 

 collection based, as some memoranda show, on an original 

 catalogue of Gould's, which was apparently never sent 

 over to America. The information contained in this 

 catalogue is transcribed on the bottoms of the stands, 

 and consists of the number, name, sex and locality of 

 each specimen, with the addition of the legend : " Type, 

 Gould, Bds. of Australia" — every bird being so marked 

 regardless of whether it was the type of the species 

 or not. 



The localities are usually very general, and are abbre- 

 viated, most of the specimens being marked " N. S. Wales," 

 "V.D. Land," " W. Australia," " N. Australia," or 

 " S. Australia." Some, however, bear more exact data, 

 as for instance, " Port Essington," " K. G. Sound," 

 *' P. Lincoln," " Moreton Bay," " Bass Straits," " Torres 

 Strait," " Houtman's Abrolhos," and " Kangaroo Island." 



It is easy to see how a slight error in copying from the 

 original catalogue would make " N. Australia " into 

 " W. Australia," etc. Furthermore, as the data of the 

 catalogue are arranged in columns and quotation marks 

 are used extensively, another source of error in locality 

 is provided. That a few errors have resulted from these 

 causes is evident, as indicated beyond. 



When I assumed charge of the ornithological collections 

 of the Philadelphia Academy some twenty-five years 

 ago, one of my first interests was to have the type- 

 specimens unmounted and placed in metal cabinets where 

 they have since been preserved, while all of the stands 

 containing the Verreaux labels have been saved and 

 marked to correspond with the specimens. 



In correspondence with Mr. Gregory M. Mathews, he 

 kindly offered to publish a fist of the types in the Austral 

 Avian Record, and corrected the references to many 

 of the species contained in a rough draft that I had 



