Olson • THE EXTINCT HAWAIIAN GENUS CIRIDOPS 
653 
two-page catalog drawn up by Sanford Ballard 
Dole, a Honolulu lawyer and amateur ornitholo¬ 
gist, later to become the first territorial governor 
of Hawaii and then a Federal judge (Damon 1957, 
Allen 1988). This list (Dole 1876) was drawn up 
to accompany a collection of mounted birds 
that formed part of a display of Hawaiiana for 
the centennial exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, 
the birds having been collected and mounted by 
James Dawkins Mills, an ardent amateur naturalist 
and taxidermist who resided in Hilo, Hawaii, from 
1851 until his death in 1887. He and his bird- 
catcher Hawelu are believed to have collected 
mainly in the Olaa area of Puna on the island of 
Hawaii (Olson 1999b) with his greatest activity 
probably having been around 1859-1860 (Manning 
1978, 1979, 1981). Under the family Fringillidae, 
in which was also included the drepanidine 
Psittirostra psittacea, Dole (1876; 2) wrote the 
following: 
“Ulaaihawane. Not previously described. 5 'A 
in.[ches] long. Bill short, straight. Toes 3 front, 
1 back. Wing coverts and breast red: throat, 
primaries and tail, black; secondaries white; head 
grey; merging into white on the upper part of the 
neck, and grey again on the back. Habitat Hawaii. 
Probably belongs to the genus Fringilla." 
It is uncertain which of Mills’ specimens were 
actually on exhibit in Philadelphia; some in 
Dole’s catalog were possibly omitted, whereas 
others that were not listed may have been included 
(Manning 1978, 1979). After the birds from the 
Philadelphia exhibition were returned to Mills, the 
naming of the new 'FringiHa* fell to Dole (1878: 
49-50). who called it FrinpiUa anna, the account 
being otherwise a verbatim repetition from the 
1876 list, to which was added: “This is a bird of 
remarkable beauty, its peculiar combination of 
colors producing a most harmonious and elegant 
effect." The type locality ’Hawaii’ refers to the 
island of Hawaii rather than to the archipelago. 
Nowhere in Dole's (1878) list of Hawaiian 
birds does he mention the number of specimens 
examined for the species listed. 
Mills retained his collection probably up until 
his death in 1887. after which portions were sold 
at auction (Manning 1978), although the bulk of 
it was later acquired by Charles Reed Bishop at 
some time between 1884 and 1888, after which it 
became the nucleus of the bird collections of 
the Bishop Museum (Manning 1978). The first 
indication that there were at least two specimens 
of Ciridops in the Mills collection was supplied 
by Wilson, who stated that “1 procured a 
specimen from Hon. C. R. Bishop, which had 
been obtained by the late Mr, Mills of Hilo. Mr. 
Bishop has a very much finer example remaining, 
with more grey about the head and neck taken by 
the same gentleman.... The present specimen [is] 
now in the collection of the Hon Walter Roths¬ 
child" (Wilson and Evans 1893: 23). 
Bishop’s ‘much liner specimen’ is the one now 
in the Bishop Museum (BPBM 19). The second 
one Wilson obtained from Bishop in 1888. along 
with several other rare birds obtained by Mills 
(Manning 1978), in exchange for species Wilson 
had collected that Bishop did not possess. 
Wilson's specimen of Ciridops eventually passed 
to Rothschild (Rothschild 1900:183), doubtless 
through purchase, as Wilson sold a number of his 
specimens to other museums, such as the 
Rijksmuseum in Leiden (Olson and James 1986) 
and museums in Paris and Liverpool (Olson 
1999a). That specimen of Ciridops ultimately 
went to the American Museum of Natural History 
(AMNH 459008) in New York when Rothschild’s 
bird collection w'as sold in 1931 (Murphy 1932). It 
is not in definitive plumage, the secondaries being 
brown rather than white and part of the belly dark 
brown rather than red. It has been regarded as a 
syntype or cotype of the species by numerous 
authors (e.g., Hcnshaw 1902, Munro 1944, 
Amadon 1950. Banko 1979), but it does not agree 
with Dole’s (1878) original description and has no 
status as a type. The Bishop Museum specimen is 
thus the holotype (Olson 1994), as also stated by 
Rothschild (1907a: 41). 
Two additional specimens, one in the definitive 
red plumage (MCZ 10995) and the other in a 
distinctive greenish plumage (MCZ 10987 ex¬ 
changed to New York where it is now AMNH 
230275), appeared rather mysteriously with a few 
other Hawaiian birds among the old collections of 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard 
(Bangs 1910). 1 proposed that this small collection 
had its origin in the expedition of William T. 
Brigham and Horace Mann Jr. to the Hawaiian 
Islands in 1864—1865 (Olson 1992). I also built an 
entirely circumstantial case for the specimens' 
possibly having been taken on Molokai, owing to 
some comments inserted by Brigham into Dole’s 
(1869) first list of Hawaiian birds. I no longer 
consider this to be a plausible geographical origin. 
Newly examined correspondence in the Smithsonian 
Institution Archives (RU 182. volume 186, page 355, 
