156 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



the bill as well as in the length of the wings and tail, but the latter is nearly 

 always shorter than in Arizona specimens of superhus. Many of my Sunora 

 representatives of the latter are, however, positively indistinguishable from the 

 larger examples of igneus. 



Females. Several of my specimens have the entire top of the head as well 

 as the cheeks, throat, and breast, strongly tinged with red ; in others, these parts 

 are perfectly plain, while the two styles are connected by a chain of variously 

 intermediate birds. There is also much variation in respect to the amount of 

 blackish on the chin, lores, etc. In a few examples this blackish is almost 

 wholly wanting. 



Winter plumage : — Adult males in autumn and early winter differ from 

 spring males only in having the feathers of the back more broadly tipped with 

 purer ashy ; those of the crown with dull olive ; those of the under parts with 

 grayish white. 



Young males in their first winter plumage have the back, nape, and sides of 

 the neck uniform ashy, or brownish ashy, with, however, much concealed red- 

 dish; the top of the head and crest strongly washed with olivaceous; the 

 under parts, except the throat and under tail coverts, much variegated with 

 dull yellowish olive ; the bill mottled with large patches of blackish. The 

 tint of the red of the head and under parts varies quite as much in these young 

 males as with spring adults, showing that it has no connection with age or 

 season. 



Young females in first winter plumage have the back, wing coverts, inner 

 secondaries, and exposed outer surfaces of most of the remaining wing ([uills, as 

 well as all the tail feathers, much ashier than in breeding birds ; the top and 

 sides of the head strongly ochraceous ; the throat, lores, etc., darker grayish ; 

 the rest of the under parts deep brownish ochraceous; the bill with the base 

 and tip of the maxilla brownish, but wath no pronounced blackish as in the 

 young male. The color of the under parts fades very gradually as the sea- 

 son advances, some of my February specimens being only slightly paler than 

 the October and November ones. 



The St. Lucas Cardinal is quite as abundant and almost as widely dispersed, 

 near the southern extremity of Lower California, as the preceding species, but 

 being of more sedentary disposition its numbers in any given locality vary only 

 slightly, if at all, with the different seasons. It occurs practically everywhere 

 from the shores of the Gulf to among the foot-hills of the mountains, but ap- 

 parently not on the summits or upper slopes of the latter. Mr. Frazar found 

 it most numerously at La Paz and Triunfo, least so at San Jose del Cabo, while 

 he did not meet with a single specimen on the Sierra dela Laguna. Mr. Bryant 

 saw the bird occasionally " among thick high shrubs and trees," on Santa 

 Margarita Island, and it was common at Comondu, while further northward he 

 traced it nearly to latitude 29°. Like the St. Lucas Towhee it is probably 

 confined to the Peninsula. It is represented in southern Arizona and northern 

 Sonora respectively by the closely allied C. c. stiperhis, and in southern Sonora 

 and Sinaloa by C. c. affinis and C. c. sinaloensis. No form of this genus is in- 



