guished place' in his work, 'both as being, until now, altogether unknown to natural- 

 ists, and as natives of what is, or at least will be, and that at no distant period, part 

 of the western territory of the United States.' Wilson seems to have handled three 

 specimens of the Tanager, one of which has gone on record as 'Peak's Museum, 

 No. 6236.' With the mutations of politics, and the shifting of political boundaries, the 

 name of the Louisiana Tanager, like that of some other animals called ludoviciana, has 

 become inappropriate; but in maps of the period, the letters 'Louisiana' stretched 

 clear across the present northern boundary of the United States into British America. 



"Wilson had no information to the point, respecting the habits of this Tanager, 

 nor does the locality in which Lewis and Clarke discovered it appear to be known with 

 precision. It was probably farther west than Wilson indicated; for the bird is not 

 known to extend eastward beyond the extreme foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, being 

 a woodland inhabitant to which the prairie stretches offer a barrier not likely to be 

 surpassed. While connected with Lieutenant (now General) G. K. Warren's Explora- 

 tion, Dr. F. V. Hayden took the bird in the Black Hills of Dakota and at Laramie 

 Peak ; these points representing its easternmost extension, for all that we know to the 

 contrary. Westward it stretches to the Pacific, at least in all suitable localities; but 

 its attachment to mountainous tracts is witnessed in its apparent absence from large 

 areas within the general limits of its distribution. It has not been ascertained to 

 penetrate much, if any, beyond the northern borders of the United States; but in 

 the other direction it extends through Mexico, in suitable tracts of country, and 

 into Central America, where Mr. Salvin has found it at elevations of some five 

 thousand feet. 



"It is migratory, like all the- other Tanagers of this country, and withdraws 

 altogether from our territory in the autumn, probably during the latter part of Sep- 

 tember and early in the following month, to re-enter the United States in the month of 

 April. Its summer home or breeding range is coextensive with the whole of our country, 

 as far as latitude alone is concerned, and its winter resorts include a considerable 

 portion of Mexico, as w^ell as of regions farther south. I do not know whether or not 

 any of the birds nestle in Mexico, but presume that some may do so, in higher or 

 northerly portions at least. The general tide of the spring migration, however, brings 

 the species over our border, and distributes the individuals composing it from the 

 mountainous portions of New Mexico and Arizona to latitude 49° north at least, if not 

 a little farther in slightly elevated districts near the Pacific coast. 



"We had no news of this Tanager for a long while after Wilson figured and des- 

 cribed it from the 'frail remains' that Lewis and Clarke furnished him. In editing 

 Wilson's work. Sir William Jardine found it 'impossible to decide the generic station of 

 this bird'; and thought it probable that British collections possessed no example ot the 

 rare species. In fact, the first additional specimens known to naturalists appear to 

 have been those brought in by Nuttall and Townsend ; while the accounts which these 

 naturalists gave are nearly the whole basis of Audubon's article upon the subject. In 

 later times, Drs. Cooper and Suckley came to be our principal authorities on the habits 

 and distribution of the species ; their observations were published in full in the twelfth 

 volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports, or the 'Natural History of Washington Terri- 



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