PEDICECETES PHASIANELLUS VAR. COLUMBIANUS 409 



There is mucb less of the buff, tawny, or brownish-yellow variegation, 

 so conspicuous in the latter. The general colors might be called brown- 

 ish-black and white in the former, the markings disposed in a pattern 

 counuon to both varieties, yet the fulvous of var. coJionbianus assuming 

 a dark brown cast. In the northern bird the angular dark-markings 

 on the white groniul of the under parts are almost black, and acutely 

 arrow-head shaped for the most part; in the southern, these markings 

 are much lighter brown, and, excepting generally the hinder ones, have 

 a more rounded outline. In the northern bird the throat is white, 

 speckled with blackish ; in the southernit is tawny, and nearly or quite 

 unmarked. Now these are the prominent characteristics, as they obtain 

 in the more strongly marked examples. But it must be remembered 

 that they are mixed and obscured in every degree in the complete and 

 gentle intergradation which obtains between the two varieties, ])roving- 

 them to be but a single species. Along the United States northern 

 boundary, and rather to the northward, specimens are more or less per- 

 fectly intermediate between the two extremes above noted. Thore is, 

 moreover, in both forms, such a difference between the breeding and 

 the autumnal plumages (the latter being the lighter), as to further 

 prove the impossibility of specific distinctions being estal)lishe(l. Birds 

 that I killed in June and July along the northern border of Dakota, 

 decidedly approached the dark northern form ; their offspring, shot in 

 the same locality the following September, when they were full grown, 

 very clearly pertained to the southern. They were all, indeed, much 

 lighter than the heaviest colored arctic birds ; but the old ones had the 

 white and speckled instead of buff" throat, and so had the young ones 

 through the summer; they only assumed the buff throat, and thus dis- 

 tinctively showed their relationship with the southern form, after the 

 September moult. Speaking geographically, as well as zoologically, it 

 is impossible to assign limits to the two forms. All the United States 

 specimens I have seen, however, are unquestionably var. colunibifoui.'i ; 

 and we may as well conventionally fix its limit along our present politi- 

 cal boundary, although the other variety only attains its special char- 

 acteristics in all their purity considerably further north. 



The northern line of distribution of var. coIumbian^s being thus deter- 

 mined, we have to note its dispersion in other directions. Its eastern 

 limit offers interesting considerations of a different character; for in 

 this direction we find the bird to have been affected, not by cliimitic 

 intluence modifying its physical characters, but by less obscure agencies 

 operating to gradually restrict its range. These agencies are directly 

 consequent u])on the advance of civilization, which, very singularly, 

 pushes the Shari)-taih'<t CJrouse contiuTially westward, and at the same 

 time carries along with it the Pinnated Grouse. Tliere is abundant 

 evidence that the Shari)-tailed once ranged much further east than it 

 does now ; and .so rai)idly is it being driven westward that a de(;ided 

 change has been affected within the n)emory of those now living. How 

 far eastward it umy have once ranged is uncertain. We have in the 

 earlier accounts some vague and evidently not reliable allusions to the 

 Sharp-tailed (Irouse as an iidiabitant of \'irginia. This may or may not 

 have been the case, most probably it was an entire mistake; and yet 

 there is no ^> priori reason against it. The Shari)-tailed is no more 

 ex<'lusively a prairiebird than the Biiuiated, which we know once 

 ranged across the whole country, and lingers to this day in certain 

 isolated localities in the Middle Stati's and even New l-aigland. Under 

 later and more authentic dates we find the Shaiptailed (iionse men- 

 tioned by Audubon, in I808, as ''accidental in the northern parts of 



