INTKODUCTION. xvii 



suitable person to visit the islands with the view of investigating their ornithology in a 

 thorough way. My young friend Mr. Scott Barchard AVilson (son of the well-known 

 Mr. George Wilson, F.R.S.) — of whose taste for natural history I was well assured by 

 his residence in my own College, by his journey to Portugal with Dr. Gadow, and by 

 his subsequent sojourn in Switzerland (Ibis, 1887, pp. 130-150) — willingly took up 

 the enterprise, and left Liverpool on February 24th, 1887, for Honolulu, where he 

 arrived on April 8th, having on his way paid a visit to Washington to confer with 

 Dr. Stejneger, whose name had already appeared in connexion with the birds of the 

 Sandwich Isles. Mr. Wilson stayed in the islands until towards the close of the 

 following year. He brought back such a collection as had never before been made 

 there ; but, rich as it was in some respects, defects became apparent as it was gradually 

 worked out, and some of these defects were so grave that, until they were remedied, 

 no complete list of the avifauna could be formed. However, he had done a great deal 

 more than anybody before him l : he had ascertained the precise localities of nearly all 

 the birds hitherto known, and added to them not inconsiderably — -fourteen new species 

 or local forms of Passeres, two of which required generic acknowledgment — all, it 

 needs not to say, being peculiar to the islands, and mostly to one particular island 

 only. 



" But Mr. Wilson was not content, as so many collectors in foreign countries are, with 

 preserving only the skins of the birds he procured. He was careful to obtain specimens 

 in spirit of all the important existing types ; and these, when properly subjected 

 to examination by Dr. Gadow, led to some remarkable results. They are contained in 

 a dissertation ' On the Structure of certain Hawaiian Birds, with reference to their 

 Systematic Position,' contributed by Dr. Gadow to Mr. Wilsons work (Part II.). Most 

 of the land-birds of the Sandwich Islands had been, at one time, thought to belong to the 

 Melipliagidce, or Honey-suckers — a family very characteristic of the Australian region, 

 and known to be very polymorphic. It was thought to be still more so; and the 

 surmise had been acted upon, so that some Finch-looking birds, Psittacirostra and 

 Loxioides, had been supposed to be Honey-suckers in disguise, and classed accordingly. 

 Dr. Gadow shewed that this supposition was wholly erroneous, and at the date of his 

 article considered, from the material in his hands, that these last, together with another 

 form, Chloridops — one of Mr. Wilson's discoveries — were true Fringillidce; while, out 

 of the whole Hawaiian avifauna, only two genera could be referred to the Meliphagidce, 

 namely, Acrulocercus (Moho of some writers) and Chcetoptila, the last being presumably 



1 " I have no desire to overlook the services of Mr. Valdcmar Knudsen, of Kauai, who sent thence to the 

 United States National Museum several collections, the most important of which was described by Dr. Stejneger 

 in the ' Proceedings ' of that institution for 1887 (pp. 75-1.02), the year of Mr. Wilson's arrival in the islands. 

 The Doctor's paper is of the exhaustive character to which one is accustomed in all his productions, and has 

 been of considerable use in working out Mr. Wilson's collections, while these have enabled the latter to correct 

 several mistakes — under the circumstances quite pardonable — made by the former, who subsequently described 

 in the same ' Proceedings' (xii. pp. 377-386) another collection from the same quarter." 



