THE IPSWICH SPARROW. 3 1 



mens than I could possibly desire to shoot. The main body leaves us late 

 in November, but stragglers are occasionally found during the winter." 



The following paragraph, published in the July, 1884, number of ' The 

 Auk' by Mr. R. Ridgway, has been productive of good results: "The 

 National Museum possesses a considerable series of eggs labelled 'Passer- 

 cuius savana. Sable Island, Nova Scotia, July, 1862 ; J. P. Dodd,' which 

 are uniformly so much larger than those of the Savannah Sparrow as to 

 strongly suggest the probability that they may be in reality those of the 

 Ipswich Sparrow. At any rate the matter is worth investigating, and it is 

 hoped that some reader of ' The Auk ' may be able to decide the question." 

 Dr. C. H. Merriam promptly followed up this clue, and in the October 

 number of the same journal we read : " Acting upon the above suggestion 

 I immediately wrote to the Rev. W. A. Des-Brisay, a resident missionary 

 of Sable Island, requesting him to send me a specimen of the common 

 ' Gray Bird ' of the Island. This he was kind enough to do, and the 

 specimen, in confirmation of Mr. Ridg way's suspicion, proves to be an 

 unquestionable Ipswich Sparrow." Here the matter rested for the next 

 ten years, and it is obvious the connection between the eggs and the 

 ' Gray Bird ' was not established without leaving a margin of doubt. 



Meanwhile '■ Passerciilus princcps' became '■Aniinodramus princeps' in 

 1885, was " relegated to the commonplace" on Long Island, N. Y., by Mr. 

 Dutcher in 1886, and its southern range was extended to Virginia by Dr. 

 Rives in 1890, and finally to Georgia by Mr. Worthington in the same year. 

 Possible breeding grounds have been visited on the sandy portions of the 

 Magdalen Islands by Mr. Maynard, Mr. Cory and Dr. Bishop; I have 

 sought them on Prince Edward Island and the adjacent coasts of New 

 Brunswick and Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton Island, which has 

 also been visited by Messrs. F. H. Allen, F. Bolles, W. Faxon, and 

 R. Hoffman, but none have been found. Hence it becomes extremely 

 probable that the Ipswich Sparrow is an island species, confined to 

 Sable Island, where it has made its home perhaps for centuries. 



Distribution and Migration. 



The fact, already stated, that the Ipswich Sparrow has not been found 

 breeding at any favorable locality along the seacoast of Nova Scotia, New- 

 foundland, or Labrador, nor anywhere on the shores of the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, points pretty conclusively to the probability of Sable Island 

 being its sole breeding ground. It may therefore be considered a good 

 example of an island species, probably related at one time to the Savanna 



