BLUETHROAr. 



323 



of them certainly have different breeding-grounds. The bird 

 named by Linnieus Motacilla sueclca is characterized by him 

 as possessing a red spot in the middle of its blue throat,* and 

 seven at least of the specimens obtained in Britain — namely, 

 the Newcastle, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Brighton and Aberdeen 

 examples, as well as that in the Strickland Collection — undoubt- 

 edly belong to this form, which, to say nothing here of its more 

 eastern range, is a well-known summer-visitant to the higher 

 and more northern parts of Norway and Sweden. But the 

 majority of Bluethroats which come to the rest of Conti- 

 nental Europe have a white instead of a red spot, and these 



white-spotted birds, erroneously regarded by most ornitholo- 

 gists as the true M. sueclca, were in 1881 first distinguished 

 by Brehm (Handbuch, p, 353) as Cijanecida leucocyana,\ 

 and do not ordinarily advance further north than Holland 

 in the west, or cross the Baltic in the east. The third form, 



• This fact has been overlooked by most wi iters, who, while applying the epithet 

 auccica to the commoner inhabitant of Europe, which never visits Sweden, have 

 bestowed on Linn{eus"s bird other specific names, as orientalis, fastuosa, ivdica, 

 and dichrosterna. 



t The name Sylvia cynnecula, Wolf (Taschenbuch, i. p. 240), though older, is 

 not distinctive, any more than is Pallas's M. ccerulecula {Zoogv. R. -A i. p. 480). 



