Carriker : List of the Birds of Costa Rica. 365 



Nacional de Costa Rica, also began collecting and working on the 

 birds of his native country about the time that Mr. Cherrie and Mr. 

 Underwood began their work, and from that time on he has done a 

 great deal, but unfortunately has written very little. 



During the past two years Mr. Outram Bangs has published several 

 papers on Costa Rican birds, describing quite a number of new forms 

 and untangling several knotty points in status and nomenclature affect- 

 ing species of that country, as well as giving the geographical distri- 

 bution of many of the forms. His previous papers on the birds of 

 Chiriqui collected by W. W. Brown, are of the greatest assistance to 

 the student of the birds of Costa Rica, because many forms described 

 in these papers have since been found to inhabit southwestern Costa 

 Rica. 



The " Biologia Centrali-Americana, Aves," by Messrs. Salvin and 

 Godman, naturally includes most of the species found in Costa Rica, 

 but this work was begun at a time when the knowledge of the birds of 

 that country was in a rather fragmentary condition, and consequently 

 many errors are present in the work. Following the theory of most of the 

 European ornithologists, the authors fail to recognize subspecies, and 

 place many forms in synonymy which are perfectly good, and give spe- 

 cific rank to others which are in many cases barely entitled to subspecific 

 rank. In spite of this, the work is of great value to ornithologists. 



The last and by far the greatest and most important contribution 

 which we have to the ornithology of Costa Rica is the magnificent 

 work by Mr. Robert Ridgway "The Birds of North and Middle 

 America," four volumes of which have already appeared, while the 

 fifth will be published in a short time. Mr. Ridgway has exercised 

 the greatest care in this work, and it is especially important to Costa 

 Rica, from the fact that Mr. Ridgway has made two extended trips to 

 that country for the purpose of securing additional material for his 

 work, and has obtained a great deal of useful information at first hand, 

 which will enable him to treat the remainder of the species of that 

 country not yet published, with greater accuracy. 



Brief Resume of the Author's Collecting. 

 I made my first trip to Costa Rica in the spring of 1902 in com- 

 pany with Prof. Lawrence Bruner of the University of Nebraska and 

 Mr. Merritt Cary, later a member of the staff of the United States 

 Biological Survey. I spent a portion of March and the whole of April 



