Todd; A Revision of the Genus Cii tmi ii i.ia. 539 



plumage above is vandyke brown, the feathers narrowly nl^cd with 

 buffy; below wood-brown. Even at this early stage the black wing- 

 spots are conspicuous, but of course not glossy. The remiges are 

 dusky brown, edged externally with vandyke brown, like the liack. 



As already pointed out (page 520, footnote), the "Cocotzin" of 

 Hernandez is not certainly identifiable, although it is apparently the 

 sole basis upon which the Ground Dove was attributed to Mexico by 

 sundry authors up at least to the year 1 77 1 , when Buffon cited Gemelli 

 Careri as authority for the occurrence of the species at Acapulco. 

 Specimens from Mexico in the Berlin Museum were called Columba 

 pusilla by Lichtenstein in 1830, but no description was given. When 

 Baird wrote his great work on North American birds in 1858 he was un- 

 able to find any differences between specimens of the Ground Dove from 

 Florida, Texas, and Lower California, but soon afterwards the receipt 

 of a series from Cape San Lucas collected by John Xantus led him to 

 provisionally bestow a name upon the birds from that locality. No 

 particular type was designated, 6 so that the sixteen specimens before 

 me, all apparently collected by Xantus, but now the property of 

 several different museums, may be regarded as cotypes. Other and 

 more recent material brings the total number of specimens examined 

 from the Cape region up to sixty-one. They differ very decidedly 

 from the average example of C. p. passerina in the respects above 

 pointed out, and, while individual variation is fully as apparent in 

 the present series, and covers the same ground as in C. p. passerina, 

 yel the lightest colored pallescens is paler than the same condition in 

 passerina, and so on. Some of the differential characters given by 

 Baird, as for instance the small size and the paucity of the wing-spots, 

 the length of the tertiaries, and the size of the tarsus, break down upon 

 examination of the series, but on the whole the form is a sufficiently 

 well characterized one, and well worthy of the recognition it has been 

 so tardily accorded. 



Males from Maria Madre, Tres Marias Islands, are absolutely 

 indistinguishable from Lower California birds. The single female in 

 the Biological Survey Collection (No. 156,723, Maria Madre, May 3, 

 1897), however, I am unable to match in an extensive series, as it 



6 Since the above was written, Dr. Charles W. Richmond has informed me that 

 he has ascertained, from an examination of the original catalogue entry of the 

 Xantus specimens, that No. 13,013 of the U. S. National Museum Collection was 

 beyond much doubt intended by Prof. Baird to be considered as the actual type of 

 his description. 



