602 ON SOME NEW FORMS OF AMERICAN BIRDS. 
versities, and Smithson transferred his fortune to our shores to 
promote the diffusion of science. 
Now, while these are noble gifts, yet Count Rumford was giving 
to his own countrymen—for he was an American—and both his 
and Smithson’s were posthumous gifts from men of large fortune. 
But the one to which I now refer was from a man who ranks 
not with the wealthy, and he laid his offering upon the altar of 
science in this country with his own hands; and it has been both 
consecrated and blest by noble words from his own lips; all of 
which makes the gift a rich treasure to American science; and I 
think we can assure him that as the same Anglo Saxon blood 
flows in our veins as does in his (tempered, it is true, with the 
Celtic, Teutonic, Latin, etc.), he may expect much from the 
American student in pure science as the offspring of his gift and 
his example. 
With this feeble tribute to our distinguished scientific collabo- 
rator I bid you adieu, and, returning to the association my most 
heartfelt thanks for the honor that has been conferred on me, 
surrender the mantle of my office to one most worthy to wear 
it — Prof. Lovering, of Cambridge. 
ON SOME NEW FORMS OF AMERICAN BIRDS. 
_BY ROBERT RIDGWAY. 
Tue birds described in this article are chiefly geographical forms 
of well known species, which have not before been characterized. 
Though we consider them as geographical races, and not as dis- 
tinct species, they are none the less entitled to separate con- 
sideration. According to the usual custom of ornithologists they 
_ would be ranked as distinct species ; but the laws of geographical, 
or climatic, variation in external features, with which the public 
_ have been familiarized by the writings of Mr. Allen and other 
< mporary authors, are so evidently the cause of the differen- 
_ tiations noted, that we cannot but consider the forms here described 
is merely climatic races of species which have like representatives 
other geographical provinces. : 
