﻿4 2 ^ SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



it is one of the Asiatic species named much later, which represents 

 the original stock, and that the form to which Linnaeus gave the 

 name is the real sub-species. As the land rose to the westward the 

 dippers expanded their range and entered southeastern Europe by 

 way of Asia Minor. One branch' apparently continued southwest- 

 ward and eventually reached the Atlas Mountains in northwestern 

 Africa sending side shoots northward across an ancient land bridge 

 to Sardinia and Corsica. Probably to this branch also belongs the 

 form inhabiting the upper levels of the Pyrenees, as the three forms 

 C. minor, from the Atlas, C. sardits from the island of Sardinia, and 

 C. pyrenaicus are said to be very closely allied. A more north- 

 westerly direction was taken by another branch which eventually 

 reached Central Europe. 



Whether the forms which now inhabit Great Britain (C. gularis) 

 and the Scandinavian peninsula (C. cincius) belong to the first or 

 to the second branch it is impossible to say at present. It may even 

 be that both branches are represented. The fact is that notwith- 

 standing the great splitting up of C. ductus by European ornith- 

 ologists lately, there is as yet not sufficient material brought together 

 for a satisfactory solution of the question of the geographical dis- 

 tribution of the dippers in Europe. In a half-hearted, slip-shod way 

 it has been more or less generally accepted that the Scandinavian 

 dipper forms a separable race, by some called C. cincius, by others 

 C. melanogaster, but the whole business is so muddled with references 

 to C. melanogaster occurring in Ireland, the Pyrenees, Switzerland, 

 Corsica, Caucasus, etc., etc.. that all sense has been lost. It is not 

 possible, without a larger material collected systematically for the 

 purpose, to do more than to indicate certain lines of connection in 

 the most timid and tentative way. The fact that the Atlas, Sardinian 

 and Pyrenean as well as some Swiss specimens have been referred 

 to the black-bellied Scandinavian form suggests the possibility of 

 their being related. The records from the British islands do not 

 throw much light upon the subject, for the English ornithologists 

 have given very little attention to the minute relationships of their 

 native birds. 1 A black-bellied dipper has been recorded from Ire- 

 land, however, and it is not beyond the possibilities that some of the 

 winter birds of so-called C. melanogaster from various points m 

 eastern Great Britain are visitors, not from Norway, as suggested, 

 but from some breeding place in Great Britain itself. The typically 



l The sarcastic remarks by the reviewer in the "Ibis" (1902, p. 353) of 

 von Tschusi's ''feat'" in recognizing the British dipper by a subspecific name 

 are quite amusing, but scarcely in the sense intended by him! 



