Todd-Caeriker : Birds of Santa Marta Region, Colombia. 27 



Salvin and Godman numbers one hundred and sixty-four species, of 

 which seven were described as new at the time, and one other later on. 

 The only clue we have to the results of his later work (i.e., subse- 

 quent to July, 1879) comes from the Catalogue of the Birds in the 

 British Museum (beginning with Volume X), where we find no less 

 than seventeen additional species (mostly dlticoline forms) credited 

 to him, including one described as new not long before. Assuredly 

 during this time he must have also sent specimens belonging to other 

 groups which had already been treated by the authors of the " Cat- 

 alogue," and for which there is consequently no published record. 

 Simons seems to have been content with a very few specimens of a 

 kind, and he seems to have overlooked many of the inconspicuous 

 forms, his collection being weak in such groups as the Formicariidse, 

 Dendrocolaptidas, etc., for example, many of which are now known to 

 be common in the region. He was evidently very accurate in his 

 labelling, however, and (in most cases) in assigning altitudes to his 

 specimens, as subsequent work has indicated. Of the one hundred 

 and eighty-one species which he is known to have taken there are only 

 four which still rest solely on the authority of his collection, and two 

 of these, Ramphastos ambiguus abbreviatus (given as R. tocard by 

 Salvin and Godman) and Sittasomus sylvioides levis ( ?) (" oli- 

 vaceus ") came from Manaure, a locality in the foothills of the Eastei-n 

 Andes, and therefore, strictly speaking, not included within the faunal 

 limits of the present region. The third species is the hummingbird 

 Campylopterus phainopeplus, which for some reason no subsequent 

 collector has succeeded in detecting, and the fourth is the Plush-capped 

 Finch, Catamblyrhynchus diadema diadema, also in the same category. 

 The Brown Expedition. — During the twenty years which passed after 

 Simons began his work only one new form, Setophaga flavivertex, had 

 been described from the Santa Marta region from material coming 

 from other sources. Impressed by the conviction that the ornithol- 

 ogical treasures of the region were still very far from exhausted, 

 Messrs. Edward A. and Outram Bangs, the well-known ornithologists 

 of Boston, Massachusetts, determined to send a new expedition into 

 this promising field, and chose Mr. Wilmot W- Brown, Jr., to conduct 

 it. He was already well known for his experience in tropical collect- 

 ing and the excellence of his work. Mr. Brown's own account of this 

 trip, as contained in a letter of recent date, is of such general interest. 



