1392 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part a 



College, November 19; Pittsburgh, November 16. Maryland — 

 Laurel, December 20. District of Columbia — December 13. 



Egg dates. — Alberta: 21 records, June 1 to June 19. 



Maine: 42 records, May 27 to July 12; 25 records, June 5 to June 

 16. 



New Brunswick: 83 records, May 25 to July 20 ; 40 records, June 9 to 

 June 26. 



Nova Scotia: 26 records, May 18 to July 22; 18 records, May 26 to 

 June 10. 



Ontario: 83 records, May 23 to August 5; 42 records, May 31 

 to June 12. 



Quebec: 68 records, May 27 to July 23; 36 records, June 2 to 

 June 24. 



PASSERELLA ILIACA (Merrem) 



Fox Sparrow 



PLATE 72 



Contributed by Oliver L. Austin, Jr. 



In his classic "Revision of the avian genus Passerella," Harry S. 

 Swarth (1920) brought the first semblance of unity and order to the 

 bewildering array of forms making up the fox sparrow complex. 

 Later, as more breeding ground material became available, subsequent 

 students of the group have been able to redefine some of the ranges 

 more exactly and to describe a few new forms, so that the current 

 A.O.U. Check-List (1957) recognizes 18 subspecies as against Swarth's 

 16. Otherwise our concepts of the group's distribution, variation, 

 and taxonomy remain essentially unchanged, and the recognized 

 races fall conveniently into the three major divisions he delineated 

 as follows: 



1. The eastern and northern forms. Breeding across the continent 

 from Newfoundland and Labrador westward to interior Alaska and 

 British Columbia, these birds have the back reddish to gray, the 

 tail and spots foxy red, the tail shorter than the wing, and a bill of 

 medium size. They include the races iliaca, zaboria, and altivagans. 



2. The northwestern coastal races. Breeding along the Pacific 

 Coast from the eastern Aleutians southeastward to northwestern 

 Washington, these birds have dull sooty-brown backs and spots 

 becoming darker from north to south, the tail shorter than the wing, 

 and medium-sized bills diminishing in size from north to south. They 

 include the races unalaschcensis, insularis, sinuosa, annectens, toivn- 

 sendi, and juliginosa. 



3. The southwestern group. Breeding from the mountains of 

 southern British Columbia and Alberta southward to central Utah, 



