526 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXXVI, 



to nearly black. No specimen, however, has the crown wholly black and 

 the prevailing color may be described as black, broadly tipped with 

 Prout's-brown or mummy-brown through which the black shows to a 

 greater or lesser extent. 



This variation in the color of the crown is in part due to wearing off 

 of the brown tips of the feathers, but is in the main evidently individual. 

 It is shown in specimens of the same place, date, and sex, and also by 

 specimens in juvenal plumage, some of which have the crown-feathers 

 brown almost to their bases, while in others the brown appears as a narrow 

 tip. 



With but two Peruvian specimens before me, I am not in a position to 

 speak conclusively of the characters which distinguish leucophrys from 

 guttata. Both these Peruvian birds (from Inca Mine), however, have the 

 crown black with but a trace of brown and in this respect they are matched 

 by about five of my sixty-two specimens of guttata; both have the inner wing- 

 feathers less distinctly barred than in guttata, while the bars in the tail are 

 almost obsolete, and in this respect they differ from topotypical guttata, 

 while more nearly resembling Cauca region birds. 



In size they are somewhat smaller than the Bogota birds, the tail being 

 noticeably shorter (see comparative measurements beyond). I can detect 

 no constant differences between the Peruvian and Colombian birds in the 

 width or extent of the postocular stripye or markings in the throat. 



Henicorhina leucophrys berlepschi Ridgw., of which I have the type and 

 three other Ecuador specimens (one each from Pedregal, Minde, and Nar- 

 anjo), while in a measure intermediate between leucophrys and guttata, 

 appears, on the whole, to be nearer the latter. The type has the tail in 

 color and in length more as in leucophrys, but the head is as brown as in the 

 brownest-headed guttata; in short, it may be exactly matched by specimens 

 from the Cauca region. The specimen from Minde (below Quito, alt. 

 5000 ft.), on the other hand, agrees exactly in color and in size with speci- 

 mens from the Bogota region. While, therefore, as in similar cases, there 

 may be some question as to which of the forms the Ecuador bird should be 

 referred, there can be none, I think, that it is not deserving of separation 

 from both of the forms between which it is intermediate. 



Hartlaub's "Troglodytes guttatus" from New Grenada which, in 1844, 

 doubtless implied Bogota, is described as "pectore et epigastric cinereis" 

 showing clearly that he had in hand a Wren of the leucophrys, rather than 

 prostheleuca type, a matter of importance since we have discovered that a 

 form of prostheleuca also occurs in the Bogota region. 



I have to thank Mr. Witmer Stone for a copy of Hartlaub's description 

 since the work in which it was published is not contained in our library. 



