20 BANGS — THE FLORIDA MEADOWLARK Eee 
region we now Call Louisiana, and that his museum received 
birds from many widely separated parts of North America. 
2d. Allowing that neither by descriptions nor by Brisson’s 
figure can it be determined to what subspecies the name Sturnus 
ludovicianus was applied, and the region from whence the bird 
was said to have come being so indefinitely given as to cover the 
ranges of three or four of the races of the meadowlark, then the 
name is an indefinite term that may be fixed upon some sub- 
species by a subsequent writer. 
Wilson, and other ornithologists, used Sturnella ludoviciana for 
the meadowlark as a whole, in place of S. magna, but so far as I 
can make out, Swainson was the first author actually to separate 
it from S. magua and to make comparisons between two really 
distinct forms. In Fauna Boreali-Americana, p. 283, 1831, Swain- 
son, under the name Sturne/la ludoviciana (Swainson), describes 
with much care a male meadowlark “killed on the plains of the 
Saskatchewan.” He mentions the whitish under tail-coverts, 
flanks, sides, etc., peculiar to the western meadowlark, and gives 
a table of measurements in which the specimen is compared 
with a specimen from Georgia. ‘Thus Swainson in 1831 fixed the 
indefinite Linnean name Sturnus ludovicianus upon the western 
meadowlark, antedating Audubon’s name Sturnella neglecta by 
twelve years. Therefore, if the name /udoviciana is not altogether 
thrown out because Linnzeus described the bird as having a black 
throat, or on the ground of its having been used by so many 
authors previous to Swainson as synonymous with Sturnella 
magna magna, I can see no alternative but to allow Swainson 
the right to fix it upon the western bird. 
This question I shall leave for the American Ornithologists’ 
Union Committee to decide, contenting myself with naming the 
Austroriparian form: 
Sturnella magna argutula’ subsp. nov. 
Type, from Dunedin, Hillsboro Co., Florida, no. 225, & adult, coll. of E. A. 
and O. Bangs, collected March 3, 1883. 
Subspecific characters.— Size, much less than in true S. magna, though the 
proportions remain about the same; yellow of under parts more intense; 
1 Argutulus — rather noisy, a little talkative. 
