Vol. 32, pp. 173-176 September 30, 1919 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



THE STATUS OF LARUS HYPERBOREUS BARRO- 



VIANUS RIDGWAY. 



BY HARRY C. OBERHOLSER. 



In connection with the determination of material in the Bio- 

 logical Survey collection, the writer has recently had occasion 

 to review the claims of Larus hyperboreus barronanus Ridg- 

 way to recognition as a subspecies. Although Dr. J. Dwight 

 questions 1 its validity, a careful reexamination of the material 

 and the other evidence in this case shows that this race is fully 

 as good as very many other subspecies of North American birds 

 that are currently accepted without demur. A few further 

 comments on this case may not be out of place at this time. 



Of course, if our subspecies must be forms in which each indi- 

 vidual bird is constantly different from all those of every other 

 related form, we should need to expunge from our lists not only 

 the majority of subspecies, but even some perfectly distinct 

 species. Such, however, is fortunately not the criterion applied 

 by most modern systematic workers in vertebrate zoology. A 

 proportion, sometimes considerable, of individual variants, 

 some of which are not distinguishable from those of other races, 

 occur in almost every subspecific form, and the diagnosis of a 

 subspecies must, therefore, often rest upon the sum of its aver- 

 age characters, which characters in many cases are fully appre- 

 ciable only in a series of specimens. This statement suggests 

 directly what we conceive to be the proper object of subspecific 

 discrimination, i. e., to call attention to existing biological facts 

 and to furnish a convenient means of reference to them as a 

 basis for broader generalizations, of which the identification of 

 specimens is not the end, but to which it is merely contributory. 



1 The Auk, XXXVI. No. 2, April, 1919, pp. 242-248. 

 35— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 32, 1919. (173) 



