258 FLAX-BIRD— FLICKER 



The same distinguished zoologist also refers to this Family remains 

 designated by him Agnopterus, and those of the " Eloi-nis " (properly 

 Hehrnis) of M. Aymard (c/. FossiL Birds). 



FLAX-BIKD, the North-American Goldfinch or "Yellow Bird," 

 Chrysomitris iristis (congeneric with our Siskin), so " called in the 

 back parts of Carolina " as Latham (Gen. Hist. B. vi. p. 120) was 

 informed by Abbot ; but the name seems to have dropped out of use. 



FLICKER, one of the most characteristic, common, and con- 

 spicuous birds of the greater part of North America, the Golden- 

 winged Woodpecker of books, the Picus auratus of Linnaeus, and 



Colaptes auratus of 

 modern ornithology. 

 Its habits have been 

 well described by 



Colaptes. (After Swainson.) Wilson, Audubon, 



and other wiiters, 

 but there is no space here to dwell upon them, engaging as the topic 

 is, for the mention of this bird suggests a more important theme. 

 AVidely distributed as it is from the Atlantic coast, so far southward 

 as Louisiana, to Canada, and thence across the Rocky Mountains, and 

 still further northward to Alaska, its place is taken on the greater 

 part of the Pacific side by a species which, avoiding Southern 

 California, reaches the tablelands of Mexico — a species more 

 brilliantly tinted, for ruby appears in its plumage instead of gold, the 

 C. 'tnexicanus or rubricatus ^ of authors. But in an intervening broad 

 belt running north-westward from Texas to British Columbia there 

 occur birds presenting almost every combination of the distinctive 

 coloration of the two species just named,^ and though one of these 

 intermediate specimens had been long before figured and described 

 as C. ayresi by Audubon {B. Amer. vii. p. 348, pi. 494), yet Baird 

 was so much persuaded that all these puzzling birds were hybrids, 

 that he used (Expl. dx. Bailroad Route, ix. p. 122) the name 

 C. hybridus to cover the whole of them.^ It must be admitted that 



^ By some writers identified with the P. cafer of Gmelin, founded on Latliam's 

 description of a specimen said to have come from South America ; but most likely 

 the locality assigned is wrong. 



- The series contained in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in 

 1857 was in that year shewn to me and descanted upon by my highly esteemed 

 friend the late Prof. S. F. Baird. He did not convince me of the truth of 

 his views, and I afterwards saw greater reason to doubt their correctness ; but 

 they were probably the only views in those days consonant with philosophy to 

 any one not in the confidence of Mr. Darwin, whose secret was not revealed till 

 the next year. 



' Cassin at that time was inclined to believe that they could be broken up 

 into several distinct "species"; but I do not know that he ever published 

 this opinion. 



