146 



HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



brown fields of their dreary outlook. What they lack 

 individually is more than made up by their numbers, 

 for all they do, and wherever they go, is concerted 

 action. 



Another Canadian bird, and a lovely one, is the 

 white-throated sparrow, which in New England 

 is known as the " Peabody bird." A favourite 

 summer home of this finch is the White Mountain 

 region of New Hampshire ; and IngersoU says, or 

 ought to have done so, much about them in his 

 delightful "Down East Latchstrings," a jolly book 

 that a Yankee railroad gives away for the asking. 

 White-throated sparrows sing magnificently all winter 

 long. In jolly companies they crowd the sheltered 

 thickets, and even when the mercury touches zero, 

 or a foot of snow canopies upland and meadow alike, 

 they are full of song ; a few simple notes, it is true, 

 but every one touchingly sweet. Here, too, is a case 

 where concerted action makes the charm. A single 

 white-throat would prove a trifle monotonous. 



Akin to the above, is our splendid foxy sparrow, a 

 grand songster, but one that is comparatively mute 

 until March, when he haunts the hedgerows, and 

 sunny nooks where the undergrowths are dense, and 

 then sings with remarkable sweetness of expression. 

 Bradford Torrey writes : " The finest bird concert I 

 ever attended was given on Monument Hill (Boston, 

 Mass.), by a great chorus of fox-coloured sparrows. 

 ... It was a royal concert ; " and elsewhere he 

 speaks of this bird as among the "immortals," and 

 he is right. 



Another finch, familiar in Europe as a cage bird, 

 is our lively cardinal grosbeak. Locally, it is known 

 as the "winter red bird," because here the whole 

 year, and more of a songster in December than in 

 June. His notes are very clear, penetrating and 

 somewhat varied, so we do not tire of them. They 

 are summer birds also, and in Southern Ohio last 

 summer they were remarkably abundant and vocal. 

 Both sexes sing, too, which is an advantage over 

 most of our birds. 



{To he continued.) 



VARIATION IN THE MOLLUSCA, AND ITS 

 PROBABLE CAUSE. 



By Joseph W. Williams. 



Part I. — Variation : to what extent must 

 Varieties be named? 



SOMETIMES I am accused as somewhat of a 

 downright conchological " variety-monger " by 

 those who do not personally know my views in this 

 relation. I am ignorant of what reasons they have 

 for assigning such a title to me, other than that I 

 have named one or two well-marked variations, liave 

 published several articles on slug-variation, and have 

 in my "Shell-Collector's Handbook" given a fairly 

 full account of named varieties of British shells, some 



of which, perhaps, are practically worthless in a 

 scientific sense, and not therefore worthy of a separate 

 name. But these worthless — scientifically worthless 

 — names have been added by workers in faunas, and 

 consequently they must remain, and, more than that, 

 they must at present be acknowledged. I make one 

 or two references as to what kind of variety-names 

 experience has taught me to be practically worthless. 

 Such are, for example, the brown variety of A. ater, 

 called (and appropriated) by Roebuck v. bninnea, since 

 Lehmann in 1S62 described a coffee or rust-coloured 

 variation as A. bninneus : the v. nigra and v. aterrima 

 of Dumont and Mortillet in the same species, which 

 are respectively described by them as "animal black 

 or lilackish," and "animal entirely black," and which 

 are nothing more or less than identical colour-forms, 

 and, when all is said and done, nothing but types ; 

 the V. pallescens of Roebuck, described as "light 

 yellow," when Moquin-Tandon previously had de- 

 scribed a colour-form as " dirty-white, a little reddish 

 or yellowish," under the same name ; the v. pnmila 

 of Moquin-Tandon in Limncea stagtialis, described as 

 "shell much smaller, amber-coloured," when Linne 

 in 1758 described a variety of this species as Helix 

 fragilis — now well known as L. sfng/talis, \a.r. fragilis 

 — which to all intents and purposes is identical with 

 it. The so-called varieties minor and major, maxima, 

 &c., which may be any size below or above a certain 

 standard, and are nothing else than so many Tom 

 Thumbs and Irish giants of their kind, not counting, 

 indeed, that the whole thing brings in confusion, since 

 in many cases what we proudly enough term var. 

 major in this country are only ordinary sizes of the 

 same species a country or so away from us on the Con- 

 tinent. Rather would it not be better if any excep- 

 tionally small or large form of a species be found, to 

 give its length and itsbreadth (between two most widely 

 separated points on the body-whorl) in millimetre 

 measure than to so absurdly christen it either var. 

 minor or var. major, as the case may be. I consider 

 it absurd, as Locard has done in the case of Bithynia 

 tentaculata, to name coloiir-forms very closely re- 

 sembling one another, and withal not differing much, 

 if at all, from the recognised type-colour. I refer to 

 what he has termed var. fiilva and var. cornea of this 

 species. To revert slightly, the absurdity of the 

 special naming of small and large forms is more 

 especially seen, perhaps, when it is even carried to 

 such an extent as to have two separately named Tom 

 Thumbs, and two separately named Irish giants of 

 any given species. Thus, taking Sitccinea Ffeifferi, 

 there is a var. parvida, so named by Pascal, and a 

 var. minor, so named by Rossmiissler ; or, taking 

 Claiisilia hiplicata, there is a var. grandis, so named 

 by Rossmiissler, and a var. maxima, so named by 

 A. Schmidt, which differ from one another just by 

 the pigmy difference of a millimetre. 



Then, would I ask, does it make concholog>- more 

 scientific — does it not rather make it look more 



