80 THE FLICKER. 



repeatedly in almost every State in which the Flicker is found, 

 and quite as frequently along the Atlantic coast as anywhere. 

 With the exception of the apparent hybrids taken near 

 Toronto, Philadelphia and New Orleans, scarcely a well 

 marked mongrel has been captured east of the Mississippi. 

 The so-called hybrids varying but little from the normal, are 

 often separated by a thousand or more miles from known 

 points of interbreeding, and are surrounded by hundreds of 

 pure birds as far as can be told by the plumage. In view of 

 these facts we may ponder on the probable source of the alien 

 blood. If it is the fading vestiges of an earlier infusion, it 

 should have been much more noticeable twenty j^ears ago, 

 since a hybrid crossed regularly with pure stock would soon 

 have a very small proportion of foreign blood, 1 in 16,384 in 

 fifteen generations for example. Mr. James Newton Baskett is 

 very much inclined to attribute such instances, especially when 

 found on the Atlantic slope, as pure variation, either rudimen- 

 tary or vestigial, perhaps the latter, since the genus is quite 

 probably of southern origin, and most all southern and south- 

 western species and races incline to red moustaches ; C. aura- 

 tns being a late northward-tending species, showing occasional 

 tendencies to revert. A hj'pothesis in part or in whole shared 

 by not a few. Dr. W. E. Rotzell also questions the occurrence of 

 hybrids in the East, C. cafemoX. being present ; and inclines to 

 the opinion that we must of necessit)' seek a better understand- 

 ing ; the so-called hybrids maj^ be explained by the fact that 

 there is a strong atavistic tendency in C. aiiratus, the form re- 

 verting so frequently in some particulars to the ancestral type, 

 exemplified so frequently in the head of the young. 



