116 A NOTE ON LOPHOPHANES ATROCEISTATUS 



nnaaorned ", I often desired to seize upon some salient point In 

 its character, to contrast it with its eastern relative ; but I 

 was as often disappointed. It has character enough, I wot — 

 few birds are of more positive, self-asserting, aggressive person- 

 ality than the whole family of the Titmice ; but, by the same 

 token, there is little to distinguish them from each other. In 

 a word, the inornatus is the counterpart of the bicolor; in this 

 statement, the whole story of its life is summed . 



Before going on to Wollweber's Titmouse, I wish to iillude to 

 a closer ally of inornatus: I mean the Black-crested Titmouse, 

 L. atrocristatus. This bird was discovered in Texas by J. W. 

 Audubon, son of the famous ornithologist, described in 1851 by 

 Mr. Gassin, and treated at some length in the latter's " Illus- 

 trations" by Dr. S. W. Woodhouse. This naturalist there 

 speaks of tracing it westward to the headwaters of the Eio 

 San Francisco in " New Mexico " {i. e. Arizona). This state- 

 ment, however, is not repeated in his notice of the species, as 

 prepared for his article in Capt. L. Sitgreaves' Report of the 

 Expedition down the Zuui and Colorado Rivers — an omission 

 which supports the inference, drawn from other sources, that it 

 is incorrect. Kone of the recent explorers in New Mexico and 

 Arizona have found the bird ; and, so far as we now know, its 

 range is confined, in the United States, to the valley of the 

 Eio Grande. Dr. Brewer does not seem to have noticed that 

 his quotation without comment of this part of Dr. Woodhouse's 

 account is at variance with his own statement made in the pre- 

 ceding paragraph. I think it very likely that the bird really 

 does get across the mountains into the Colorado watershed ; 

 but for the present I must dismiss the case with the Scotch 

 verdict—" not proven ". So I put the Black-crest* in limbo at 

 the bottom of my page, M'hich is a convenient place to stow 

 away those species which have no business in the book at all. 



' liopliophanes atrocristatus.— Black-crested Titmouse. 



Parus atrlcristatns, Caee. Pr. Phila. Acad. v. 1850, 103, pi. 2 (Texas). 



Lopbophanes atrlcrlstatus, Pd. Stanab. Rep. GSL. 1852, 332.— Ons«. 111.1853, 13, pi. 3.— 

 Woodh.Sitgr. Rep. Expl. ZuBi K. 1853, 69.— Bd. BNA. 1858, 285.— Bd. Rev. 1864, 78.— 

 DreSB. Ibis, 2d ser. 1865, iBS.—Vcop. B. Cal. i. 1870, 43, fig. (not in California!;.— 

 Oouea, Key, 1872, 80, f. 23.-5. B. * R. NAB. i. 1874, 90, pi. 6, f. 2. 



Black-crested Titmouse, Texas Titmouse, ViUg. 

 Hab. — Valley of the Rio Grande, and southward in Mexico. 



Ch. sp. — g ^ Olivaceo-phimbeua, infra cinereo-albus, laieribm rufis, fronte 

 albidd, cristd nigrd. 



$ 9 : Plumbeous, with a shade of olive, the wings and tail rather darker 

 and purer, edged with the color of the back, or a more hoary shade of the 



