1 

 ORNITHOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS. 259 



iu winter as far south as North China and Japan, and is usually quoted 

 by authors treating of the birds of these regions as A. canescens. 



Its chief habitat seems, however, to be the Arctic portions of North 

 America, where it has been found in abundance from Alaska to the 

 Atlantic coast. By some authors it has been suggested that, the true 

 exilipes also occurs through the whole of Siberia and Northern Eussia to 

 Finmarken, in Northern Norway, but, as far as I can judge, it has been 

 confounded with a pale northern form of linaria, the J., linaria pallescens 

 (Homey.). (Cf. a paper of mine in "The Auk," 1884, p. 147, "Notes 

 on the genus Acanthis.") In fact, it is almost easier to confound exilipes 

 with the non-couspecific linaria than with the Greenland form with 

 which it is here considered to rank only as a subspecies ; but this state- 

 ment only relates to the young and immature specimens, and perhaps 

 a few hybrids from places where both species breed in the vicinity, of 

 each other, but never to the adults which are easily distinguished by 

 the color of the rump, this being, in exilipes, unstriped, pure white, or 

 suffused with a delicate rosy tinge. The size of both species is essen- 

 tially the sa<ipe, except that exilipes has a much shorter and differently 

 shaped bill, so that pure-bred young may easily be distinguished by a 

 somewhat careful observer. I have, for the preparation of these remarks 

 and of the memoir in "The Auk," quoted above, handled about two 

 hundred and twenty specimens of both forms (not including holboellii 

 and rostrata), and among the whole lot there was hardly more than one 

 specimen the identification of which gave any serious trouble, that being 

 an adult male with red breast, and showing intermediate features sug- 

 gesting its probable hybrid origin. For more particulars I refer to the 

 tables of dimensions under the next foiegoing species. 



I can detect no difference iu the intensity of the red color of the breast 

 in Asiatic and in American specimens, as I have specimens from both 

 regions, which are colored rather richly, while others show only the 

 faintest possible trace. In fact, I can match all my Bering Island skins 

 with their counterparts from the other side of the Pacific Ocean. 



