14 Bulletin American Miiseum of Natural History. [Vol. XXXVI 



range of the Andes east of Bogota, are localities from which many speci- 

 mens are now received. 



At a greater distance, the region about Villavicencio has supplied a vast 

 number of skins. This city is the gateway of the trail to Bogota toward 

 which, in default of an eastern outlet, the current of trade from the Llanos 

 flows. Villavicencio thus draws on the region east to the Casanare, and 

 south and east to the rubber producing forests of Amazonian Colombia. 



Transportation facilities and commercial relationships, therefore, make 

 Bogotd the market for the products of the vast region lying to the east of 

 it, and for this reason eastern Colombia has supplied a far greater number 

 of birds' skins than the region west of Bogota, where transportation to the 

 marts of the world may be secured without the passage through Bogota 

 required by the products of the east. 



Nevertheless, the demand for skins by the Bogota dealers has brought 

 specimens from as far north as southern Santander, from west at least as 

 far as Ibagiie at the entrance to the Quindio trail over the Central Andes,^ 

 and as far south as the head of the Magdalena Valley at San Agustin. It 

 was here, that in April, 1912, Leo E. Miller found a native collecting with 

 his blow-gun about forty Hummingbirds a day for a Bogota dealer, as 

 above related. 



It is apparent, therefore, that in exploring the Andes from base to sum- 

 mit and working both to the east and west of the Eastern Range, the Bogota 

 collectors have pursued their calling in four life-zones and two quite unlike 

 faunas. Nevertheless, for the past seventy-odd years, ornithologists have 

 used these Bogota specimens in defining the characters and distribution of 

 birds without knowing whether they came from the Magdalena Valley or 

 the headwaters of the Meta, from the Tropic or the Temperate Zone. 



Even when used in a broad sense, the locaUty ! Bogota' has come to 

 have a far more definite meaning than, in view of the facts above recorded, 

 should be given it. With the wider-ranging species it is obvious that 

 Bogota collections may contain specimens from far separated localities, 

 and, in default of labels, it is often impossible to distinguish between geo- 

 graphic and individual variation. 



In a number of instances our collections show that birds inhabiting both 

 the western and eastern slope of the Eastern Andes, which have been sup- 

 posed to represent one form, belong in fact to two, while in the case of the 

 House Wren no less than three forms occupy the area which the most 

 recent reviser of this group beUeved to be occupied by one. 



It seems not improbable that the least-known portion of the restricted 



1 The type of Chamaepetes g. goudoti came from this region. 



