90 
BULLETIN OF TEE NUT TALL 
strictures that are hardly deserved. My Catalogue of the Birds of 
New England was, at first, only intended to be a simple list, without 
note or comment, transferring to a challenged list such species given 
by others as my own judgment led me to question, and adding the 
names of recent additions. This list I gave for what it was worth, 
expecting and desiring to have it amended and improved. But this 
writer seems to have totally misapprehended, in several essential 
respects, the purpose proposed in my list. It was but an initiative 
towards a complete and reliable list of the birds of New England, 
based upon the sure foundation of undisputed facts. Mere opinions, 
no matter by whom held, crude inferences from insulated facts, and 
still less empty conjectures, without data, were of no value in my 
eyes, and wholly irrelevant. We had had quite too much of this 
already, and our local lists had been overloaded with, and rendered 
comparatively valueless by, smart guesses and shrewd anticipations 
of coming occurrences. 
Nor was it any part of my original design to indicate the charac- 
ter of the presence of birds in the New England States. At the 
last moment, and when it could only be done very briefly, and there- 
fore incompletely, my friend, Mr. J. A. Allen, persuaded me to add 
this feature, after the whole article was in type, and when it could 
only be done so far as was possible, without materially adding to its 
length. Of course the additions are very brief, and never ex- 
haustive. 
“ H. A. P.,” apparently not appreciating the real purport of these 
notes, is at the quite unnecessary pains to supplement them with 
additions, all of them more or less liable to exceptional criticism. 
For instance, Turdus migratorius is given by me as a general sum- 
mer resident, which is certainly correct, so far as it goes. Of course 
the merest tyro in ornithology knows that the Eobin is also migra- 
tory in the spring and in the fall, and also that birds of this species 
may be met with irregularly and occasionally during winter in 
various parts of New England. But these peculiarities are many- 
sided, and to have done the subject full justice, wdth proper dis- 
crimination, would have required more space than I had at my dis- 
posal. “ H. A. P.” naively informs us that the Eobin is a constant 
resident in Southern New England. If by this he intends to have 
us understand that the same individual Eobins are constant resi- 
dents with us, I take issue with him. I deny it to be a fact. The 
individuals of this species that occupy New England in the summer 
