WHITE-THROATED TREECREEPER. 
This description appears to be based on a Lambert drawing which differs 
very little from tins Watling painting 139 perhaps in lacking the ashy tail 
coloration and hi having the head more noticeably barred. 
When Gray saw the Lambert painting he identified it as Glycipliila subocularis 
Gould and suggested that species should be called Glycipliila (?) leucophcea. 
Strickland and Gould, however, identified the drawing as that of the White- 
throated Treecreeper, although they used picumnus for that species, and the 
latter in his “Handbook” called that species Climacteris leucophcea. The 
noticeable feature of these identifications is the lack of remark regarding the 
under coloration, which does not indicate anything about the remarkable flank 
markings of the present species. Otherwise, the painting No. 139 is very good, 
shoving the ashy tail and the reddish spot behind the eye of the female. 
Temniinck and Laugier named the two species, and Gould figured them 
under the reversed names, and Gadow catalogued them erroneously, so we have 
a confused chronology thus:— 
T. and L. Gould Gould Gadow 
figd. Hand. Cat. 
Brown Creeper Cl. picumnus scandens scandens leucophcea 
White-throated Creeper scandens picumnus leucophcea scandens 
and at present the correct usage is picumnus for the first and leucophcea for 
the second. 
Prior to Temminck’s description Vieillot had named the present species 
Pelrodroma bailloni and given a figure of it in the Nouv. Diet, d'Hist. Nat. 
The description there is good, though not complete, but an easily recognisable 
figure was a little later published in the Galerie des Oiseaux. For some 
unknown reason Gould did not refer to this name, and Gray only included it 
as a synonym with a ? and Gadow did the same tiling. The recognition of 
this name might have obviated some of the later confusion. 
Then, some years later, Gould described as a new species Climacteris 
pyrrhonota on account of the red-brown rump. 
Ramsay, twenty years afterward, wrote: “ C. pyrrhonota I find to be only a 
stage of plumage of C. leucophcea; specimens from Cairns, Queensland, are much 
smaller, and in the immature birds show the same rufous upper tail-coverts.” 
A year or two later Ramsey named this northern form C. 1. minor , and then 
Reichenow named the same form C. weiskei. I am separating this specifically 
so that w r e have now only two subspecies :— 
Cormobates leucophcea leucophcea (Latham). 
South Queensland, New South Wales, 
Victoria, Tasmania. 
Cormobates leucophcea grisescens Mathews. 
South Australia. 
Ill 
