66 Brewster on Birds from Arizona and New Mexico . 
by Mr. Henshaw in 1874, in fall feathering. My birds have the 
breast-spotting decidedly more distinct than in H. palmeri but 
the color of the arrow-heads is not darker than that of the back. 
After reading all that has been written on the subject and care- 
fully comparing bendirei with cinereus , I am inclined to differ 
from my friend Mr. Henshaw and to agree with Dr. Coues, in 
considering bendirei a distinct species. Its close relationship to 
cinereus is evident enough, in spite of the very different coloring 
of the two birds. But Mr. Henshaw’s statement that 44 the wide 
separation of the two forms in question, and the fact that the Cape 
Saint Lucas bird is restricted to the coast, while the Bendire’s 
Thrush inhabits the dry, almost waterless, plains of the interior, 
will sufficiently account for the discrepancies between them,” seems 
to me rather to concern the original derivation of the Arizona 
form than to affect its specific standing. The very character of 
the distribution of the two birds favors the assumption that they 
are distinct. So far as we know, the Arizona Thrashers are con- 
fined to a very limited area, and if. as the evidence goes to show, 
their colony is absolutely cut off from the equally restricted one 
of cinereus , there can, of course, be no intergradation between 
the two, and the well-marked characters of bendirei must entitle 
it to specific rank. 
2. Harporhynchus lecontei ( Lawr .) Bp. Leconte’s 
Thrasher. — A fine adult male taken near Phoenix, Feb. 21, 
1880, is in the present collection and brings the number of known 
specimens up to five. The species is apparently a very rare one in 
Arizona. Mr. Stephens has seen only two individuals during sev- 
eral years’ experience. He writes : “I took this specimen ten miles 
north-west of Phoenix. The locality was a brushy desert with 
large cacti. At the time, it was singing in a similar manner to 
H. palmeri , only very sweetly. I should consider them excellent 
songsters. They do not mock other birds and the song is unlike 
that of H. redivivus. A short time afterwards I saw two other 
Thrushes, one of which was lecontei. They were flitting through 
the brush and on shooting I got the wrong one, an II. ftahiveri. 
The latter was abundant in the locality and H. bendirei com- 
mon.” 
In the 44 Key to North American Birds” Dr. Coues reduced 
Leconte’s Thrasher to a variety of H. redivivus , and this ar- 
rangement, also followed in his later works, has been generally 
