478 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



oryzivora. Other individuals are very close to specimens referred 

 (on geographical considerations) to mexicana. Moreover, the Boli- 

 vian specimens vary in color precisely as do those from Colombia, 

 and altogether it looks as if the right of the latter to a distinctive 

 name might be successfully challenged, the more so as no dependence 

 can be placed on size as a diagnostic character. 



No. 42,825, Fundacion, August 12, is a young bird, with the bill 

 almost wholly light colored, and the lores and suborbital region en- 

 tirely bare. 



A rare bird in the semi-arid Tropical Zone, but more numerous in 

 the humid areas. Simons got it at Minca, and also at Manaure, near 

 the base of the Eastern Andes, while Mr. Smith secured a single 

 specimen as high up as Valparaiso (Cincinnati). It was encountered 

 both by Mr. Brown and the writer at several places in the main Sierra 

 Nevada, up to at least 3,500 feet. There was a small flock of perhaps 

 ten birds in the scrub around Pueblo Viejo, and another small flock in 

 the lower Chirua Valley. Several were seen at Tucurinca, and also 

 around Fundacion. It is essentially a bird of the open, where scat- 

 tered trees are found, but is also' present in forest where it is not too 

 dense. 



458. Amblycercus holosericeus subsp. 



Five specimens: Heights of Chirua. 



The color in this species being a uniform black, and the sexes 

 being alike, the discrimination of its various races is a matter of no 

 small difficulty, for while geographic variation is evident enough, 

 there is little beyond difference in size and proportions upon which 

 to rely. It is clear that the birds from Nicaragua and Costa Rica 

 should be separated from those of Mexico, having the wing decidedly 

 longer than the tail instead of vice versa, as in the others, and they 

 have accordingly been given the name centralis by the present writer 

 {Proceedings Biological Society of Washington, XXIX, 1916, 95). 

 When we come to examine specimens from western Colombia we find 

 that in the relative proportions of these parts they resemble centralis, 

 to which they are nearest geographically, rather than holosericeus. 

 Beyond question, however, they cannot safely be referred to either 

 of these forms, and in the writer's judgment Dr. Chapman has done 

 right in describing them under the name flavirostris. The writer has 



