( 460 ) 



6. The genus LOXIA. 



I have spent considerable time in studying the Crossbills, and 1 am very 

 mnch obliged to various bi-other-oruitliologists who kindly lent me specimens 

 and notes, especially to Mr. A. Harvie-Brown and Mr. Eagle Clarke, in Scotland, 

 Ritter von Tschusi zn Schmidhoft'en, Mr. John Millais, Mr. W. Huskin Butterfield, 

 Professor Wilhelm Blasins, Mr. Howard Saunders, and Herrn Carl Hellmayr. 

 I have thus been able to compare 405 Crossbills at one time in the Tring Museum. 

 The British Crossbills gave the greatest trouble. It took me no time to confirm 

 what I knew for many years — namely, that pyti/opsittacus (first described by 

 Borkhansen, 1793, not by Bechstein) was a totally different species, and that 

 the large-billed Scottish Crossbills are not pyti/opsittacus. The question arose : 

 What to do with the Scottish form ? Although it is of course possible that 

 pytyopsittacus occasionally reaches Scotland as an excejrtional visitor, none of those 

 that I saw belong to it. But even the English Crossbills are not the Scottish 

 ones ; they are mostly smaller, and are very close to L. rurci rostra curtirostra, 

 but they have generally thicker bills and duller colours. My conclusions therefore 

 are, that on the Continent the true pyfyupsittacii.s — though probably originally 

 developed from curvirostra — has become so widely distinct as to be able to live 

 and breed in the same districts with curvirostra, and therefore must be regarded 

 as a species. 



In Great Britain, where all Crossbills have thicker bills, a similar develop- 

 ment took place. Here the British form (Loxia curvirostra anglica Hart., Vog. 

 pal. Fauna, p. 119) has also assumed larger bills and general dimensions in the 

 mountain-forests of Scotland, but its development has not gone so far that we 

 can treat it as a species, for some specimens connect them with anglica. I have 

 therefore called the Scottish form Loxia curvirostra scotica ( Vog. pal. Fauna, 

 p. 12U). 



7. The forms of PASSER SIMPLEX. 



Passer simplex, the Desert-Sparrow, has been originally described from 

 Ambnkol in Nubia, and was, according to Henglin, common on the wells in the 

 Bajuda, in northern Kordofan and Senuaar, as well as in the desert east of Berber. 

 Baron von Erlanger has separated the Tunisian form as Passer simplex saharae, 

 because it was lighter and clearer grey and had a black bill. The latter character 

 cannot serve for distinguishing this form, because it is evidently seasonal. In 

 Tunis and Algiers yellow-billed males occur in autumn, and Heuglin found the 

 Nubian form black-billed in spring. Unfortunately all recent travellers (Koenig, 

 the Hon. N. (.'. llothschild and others) liave failed to come across Passer simplex 

 anywhere in Nubia. Therefore fresh specimens cannot be compared with Tunisian 

 and Algerian ones. We have the odd case that only fine, freshly collected 

 examples from Algiers and Tunis are to hand, only old ones (the types in Berlin 

 being eighty years old) from Nubia. It is true that they look different, as 

 described by Erlanger, but the study of fresh material is desirable ! It is queer 

 that P. simplex has not recently been found in Nnbia, especially as Messrs. Koenig 

 and Rothschild have specially looked out for them. Apjjareutly the birds have 

 left the Bajuda altogether, though we do not know the reason. 



A well-marked form is Passer simplex zarudnyi from Transcaspia. 



(these notes will be continued.) 



