ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
47 
In my list are six or seven species given without defining the extent of 
their distribution,^ — some of them, though found to my certain knowledge 
all over New England, and beyond its borders, are only found in favorable 
localities ; others probably have a more restricted range. In regard to all 
these, my views as to the extent of their range are fully given elsewhere, 
and, as your correspondent shows, are sufficiently known to him. Yet in 
spite of this knowledge he did not scruple to attribute to me views which 
he now shows he knew I did not entertain. This is especially noticeable 
in the case of Vireo noveboracensis. Here, as it seems, he knew that it is 
my recorded opinion that this bird rarely, if ever, goes north of Massachu- 
setts, yet he professes to understand me as signifying all New England, 
when I had not said so, and when I had elsewhere — unrestricted as to 
space — stated that I did not so believe I 
And where are his facts demonstrating that HelminthojpTiaga chrysoptera 
is not a rare bird in New England? We have again only an opinion that a 
bird must not be called rare if it regularly breeds here in numbers. The 
numbers must be very small in this case, and the finding of the fourth 
n^t during ten or twelve years’ search by hosts of collectors, is to be 
spoken of in the future tense ! A bird that has only been found in a very 
restricted area, perhaps a thousandth part of New England, and so un- 
common that only two or three of its nests have ever been taken, must 
not be spoken of as rare ! 
In the case of Coturniculus passerinus your correspondent is excusable 
for misunderstanding my real meaning, as it is somewhat blindly ex- 
pressed. What I intended to convey was, that while it is chiefly confined 
to Southern New England, it is, as a general rule, rare throughout a very 
extended region into which it sparsely spreads itself. Wherever found it 
is a species of very irregular and unequal distribution. It wanders into 
Northern New England, and occurs even as far to the northeast as St. 
Stephen, N. B. In all this extended area the localities in which it can 
be said to be at all common are restricted in area and few in number. 
Your correspondent refers to its being exceptionally common in Nan- 
tucket. All this while he well knew that the fact of its abundance on 
that congenial island was well known to me. (See North American Birds, 
Vol. I, p. 554, lines 20, 21 and 22.) 
More than forty years ago I ventured to* publish a supplementary list 
of the birds of Massachusetts (Boston Jour. Nat. Hist., I, 435). In this list 
I placed inferentially and with a ? Polioptila cmrulea. From that day to 
the time of the publication of my catalogue I have vainly sought for any 
confirmation of my supposition. Your correspondent is the first to come 
to my support and to confirm my conjecture, but, prior to May, 1875, 
there is no record ” whatever confirmatory of its claim to be counted as 
a bird of New England. Yet because, nearly two years after the prepara- 
tion of my paper, your correspondent hears of its having been taken in 
