196 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



and Santa Barbara Mountain, etc.), 6, lo, 123 (Nuevas River), 7 (Canada 



Mountains, etc.). 113 (West McKinley); XXX, 1913, 123 (Nuevas River), 125 



(Santa Barbara). 

 Falco sparverioides Read, Bird-Lore, XIII, 191 1, 44 (McKinley); XV. 1913, 45, 



and XVI, 1914, 50 (Santa Barbara). 

 Falco sparverius sparveroides Bangs, Auk, XXXII, 1915, 484 (I. of Pines; crit.)* 



Thirteen specimens: Bibijagua, Los Indies, and Nueva Gerona. 



Three of the males have the back immaculate, but in the other 

 males it is spotted, and in one case as heavily barred as in F. sparverius 

 loquacula of Porto Rico. The spotting on the sides is prominent in 

 some specimens, but absent in others. The tail-pattern, however, 

 is fairly constant — far more so than in the Porto Rican bird. The 

 rufous crown-spot is barely indicated in a few of the males, but in 

 several of the females it is large and prominent. In only one of the 

 females do the markings of the under surface approximate in intensity 

 the average of those in true F. sparverius. Males taken July 9 and 11 

 are in the midst of the postnuptial moult. Only one specimen of this 

 series is in the dark phase. 



If this form is a distinct species, as ranked by most authors, its 

 distribution is certainly most peculiar, occupying as it does an area 

 between that of two other forms which are unquestionably merely 

 geographic races of F. sparverius, the range of which thereby becomes 

 discontinuous. According to Mr. Cory ( Catalogue of West Indian 

 Birds, 1892, 139) the Santo Domingo bird {Falco dominicensis Gmelin) 

 is separable from that of Cuba, differing in having no dark phase, as 

 well as in other respects. Mr. Cory bases his statement on the ex- 

 amination of no less than forty-six specimens from Haiti and Santo 

 Domingo. If he is correct, there can remain no valid reason for 

 refusing recognition to dominicensis as an insular race of sparverius. 

 A due regard for consistency would require also that the light phase 

 of the Cuban bird (to which Mr. Ridgway applied the name leucophrys 

 in 1870), be recognized in a similar way, but complications immedi- 

 ately arise upon attempting to include the dark phase in such an 

 arrangement. The case has been very fully discussed by Mr. Chap- 

 man {Bulletin American Museum of Natural History, IV, 1892, 295), 

 who points out that the dichromatism in this species is unusual in 

 that it involves also certain changes in the pattern of coloration. 

 That such a striking variation should have developed in only a com- 

 paratively restricted portion of the range of the Falco sparverius 



