A REVISION OF THE WOOD-WARBLER GENUS BASILEUTERUS AND ITS ALLIES By W. E. Clyde Todd Of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Peniisijlvania INTRODUCTION The studies in systematic ornithology in which the writer has been engaged have served to show how far we still are from a proper understanding of the status and relationships of sundry familiar avian groups, and how many distributional problems concerning them still remain to be solved. The identification of specimens often involves extensive comparisons, and when it comes to the Revision of a group as large as Basileuteims, the collection of no single insti-tution is adequate for the purpose, and only by pooling all available resources can such a study be carried out. Some return is surely due those whose help must be sought before a paper of this kind can be produced, while the time and labor devoted to the research in ques-tion would seem to justify placing the hill results on record for the benefit of other workers in the same field. In preparing the present revision the writer has handled no less than 2,615 specimens, of which 231 are in the collection of the United States National Museum, including that of the Biological Survey. The remainder were drawn from the collections of the following American institutions : The American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Carnegie Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Field Museum of Natural History, all of which contributed their full series of this group. From abroad small but important loans of material were made by the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesell-schaft of Frankfort-am-Main, Germany, the Musee Polonais d'His-toire Naturelle of Warsaw, Poland, the museum of the University de Neuchatel, Switzerland, and the British Museum (Natural History) of London, England. To the authorities of these several institutions thanks are due for such courtesies extended. The writer is under obligations also to Mr. Donald R. Dickey of Pasadena, Calif., for the loan of certain pertinent specimens from Salvador, and to Dr. No. 2752.— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 74, Art. 7 2C10— 29 1 1
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