1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 71 



NOTES ON EUROPEAN MARSH-TITS WITH DESCRIPTION OF A 

 NEW SUBSPECIES FROM NORWAY. 



BY LEONHARD STEINEGER. 



To satisfactorily settle the status of the various forms of the Marsh tits 

 occurring iu Europe will require the bringing together of a vast material 

 from all parts of that continent, and a very careful and intelligent.study 

 of it when collected. When wading through the extensive literature 

 one is struck with the contradictions and the confusion which meet one 

 on every hand, aud in looking into the matter one will fiud that it is all 

 due to the desire of those, who try to make any distinctions at all, to re- 

 fer the specimens which they happen to possess to-one of two names. It 

 is a kind of religion with them that there must be no more than two 

 forms, or "species" of Marsh-tits in Europe. The gentlemen who be- 

 lieve in the distinction of Parus palustris and Parus borealis are in the 

 majority, and they are represented in nearly all the countries of 

 Europe. In many of these countries two species of Marsh tits occur 

 together in the same locality, hence one must necessarily be P. palus- 

 tis and the other P. borealis. In the former identification they are 

 not likely to be mistaken, for it seems that Parus palustris is very uni- 

 form, both in size aud coloration, all over Central and Northern Europe 

 (exclusive of Great Britain, which has its own insular race, P. palustris 

 dresseri), and their descriptions of this species agree pretty well ; but 

 when they come to point out the characters of the alleged P. borealis as 

 compared with P. palustris, they fall into endless contradictions, be- 

 cause their so-called P. borealis are different birds in the different locali- 

 ties. To substantiate this assertion let us first take up Victor Fatio's 

 account of the Marsh-tit in the Swiss Alps (as reproduced in Dresser's 

 Birds of Europe, in, pp. 109-113), from which we gather that he con- 

 siders P. palustris (the form which he describes as having the hood 

 •' deep, lustrous black, with blue reflections") to be smaller with a smaller 

 and slenderer bill than P. borealis * (and P. alpestris, both of which have 

 the hood blackish-brown with reddish-brown reflections). If, again, we 

 turn to Degland and Gerbe's "OrnithologieEuropCenne" (i, p. 566), the 

 differences are stated as above: P. borealis (Degl. & Gerbe's P. palus- 

 tris) being distinguished " par uue aile plus longue," and "par uu bee 

 plus fort, plus eleve, plus large a la base." Robert Collett, on the 

 other hand, in speaking of the Marsh-tits in Norway (Nyt Mag. Naturv., 



* P. palustris : length of wing, 61 to 63 mm ; length of beak from gape, 10 to 11""" ; 

 from frontal plumes, 7.5 to 8 nim ; breadth of beak, 4.5" im ; heighth of beak, 4"'">. P. 

 borealis (and alpestris): wing, 65 to 68 m,n ; beak, from gape, 11.5 to 14.5"""; from 

 frontal plumes, 9 to ll mm ; breadth, 5 to 6 mm ; height, 4.5 to 5 mm . 



