1893.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPAIA. 51 



decidedly that this character has no diagnostic value whatever. 

 How Mr. Coale's type of shufeldti can be, as Mr. Chapman says, 

 " intermediate" between coast and interior birds from British Col- 

 umbia I cannot conceive. It is highly probable that the Juncos of 

 western North America are as susceptible to local differences of 

 environment occurring throughout their extensive breeding range as 

 any other genus in the country and that a recurrence of any form 

 is liable to happen at any isolated point where physical conditions 

 are duplicated. A thorough overhauling of the group on this prin- 

 ciple may yet rescue it from the sacrilegious hands of the species 

 hunter and synonymist. I think it is safe to say that birds indistin- 

 guishable from oregonus breed on the better-watered mountains of 

 interior British Columbia. The only approach to " shufeldti " (sic) 

 is found in birds from the most arid lowlands and most eastern 

 Rockies, but their differences are too slight and fortuitous to war- 

 rant a distinction. 



194. Melospiza fasciata guttata. Kusty Song Sparrow. 



Specimens collected during the breeding season show that Melo- 

 spiza fasciata rufina is not present on the southern coasts of British 

 Columbia at that time. The distribution of guttata in Washington 

 and British Columbia is singularly uniform in all kinds of localities, 

 no difference between coast and interior individuals being apparent. 



Melospiza hncolni striata. ) 



y Lincoln's Finch. 



195. Melospiza lincolni. j 



As given in my notice of this species in the Auk, further mate- 

 rial from the type district of striata shows that the characters 

 assigned to that race are too slight and variable to distinguish it 

 from lincolni. Since the paper referred to went to press I have 

 received Mr. Brewster's series of striata but see no reason to alter 

 my previous statements regarding that race. 



196. Passerella iliaca unalaschensis. Townsend's Sparrow. 



197. Passerella iliaca schistacea. Slate-colored Sparrow. 



Fifty-two skins of unalaschensis, including the Smithsonian Insti. 

 tution series and those collected by Mr. Streator, present the sub- 

 joined facts. Starting in the Rocky Mountains, we have first a light 

 gray specimen of typical schistacea from Nelson ; going west we find 

 another slightly darker and another of the same shade with slightly 

 larger bill which Mr. Chapman labels " sub-sp. nov.," both of which 

 are schistacea intermediates. From the west Cascades, British Col- 



