Part II. 



A DISTRIBUTIONAL LIST OF THE BIRDS COLLECTED' IN 

 COLOMBIA BY THE AMERICAN MUSEUM'S EXPEDITION. 



Classification. — It is greatly to be regretted that no one system of 

 classification is accepted as authoritative by writers on South American 

 birds. Everyone who has experienced the annoj'ance of referring to faunal 

 papers, the writers of no two of which may have adopted the same system 

 of classification, and which as authors' ' separates,' are usually without an 

 index, should admit that convenience of reference is here of first importance. 



The writer has seen too many systems of classification accepted and 

 rejected to have much faith in the stability of any now, in greater or less 

 measure, current. So far as he personally is concerned it is immaterial 

 which one of half a dozen now in use be followed, but it is material that we 

 use that one consistently. 



If we except Sclater and Salvin's 'Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium ' 

 (1873), which included the birds of Mexico and Central America as well as 

 those of South America, only one list of South American birds, as such, has 

 ever been published. This, Brabourne and Chubb's 'Birds of South 

 America,' is not only as authoritative in the present, state of our knowl- 

 edge, as, we can perhaps expect such a general work to be, but it conforms 

 to the Classification of Sharpe. 



From the standpoints of both scientific excellence and expediency it. 

 seems therefore eminently desirable to accept the classification of this work, 

 and I have adopted it in the present paper. The numbers in parentheses 

 preceding each name in the systematic portion of this paper are those of 

 Brabourne and Chubb's work. 



Nomenclature. — The nomenclature in Brabourne and Chubb's list is 

 binomial, the authors, having deferred an expression of opinion of the 

 subspecific relations of the forms listed until these forms were treated at 

 length in succeeding volumes of their work, a plan, which, owing to the 

 unfortunate death of the senior author, will now never be realized. 



It is, of course, out of the question to use binomial nomenclature in the 

 present paper, and the trinomials employed follow current usage, or express 

 the author's views as they have been formed through a study of the material 

 at hand and under the requirements stated below. 



Aside from this necessary change from binomialism to trinomialism, 

 I have followed the nomenclature of Brabourne and Chubb's Hst, except 



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