AVERY BIRD COLLECTION 77 
They retreating from this strange apparition, it pursued 
them to the roof of the pigeon house. It must be caught 
and fed, poor little famished bird. A long fishing pole 
dislodged it from the pigeon house. It flew into a pine 
nearby; scared from this it lighted in another; still 
pursued by hunger and not knowing where to go, it took 
a long flight which brought it near to the ground, but 
still in a pine; another and another time compelled to 
fly, it left the pine grove and flew to the hillside where 
its parents had fallen to my gun; again frightened from 
_its perch, a long flight brought it to an oak where it set- 
tled on a limb near the ground; once more disturbed, and 
its wings now weak with constant use, it made about 
seventy-five yards of trajectory and grappling at the low- 
est limbs of a willow fell to the ground. The cries of 
hunger were soon appeased by a bountiful supply and 
the little captive seems happy with his brothers. Its ef- 
forts to escape after it had fallen hungry and tired to 
the ground were in vain; its feeble wings refused to bear 
it aloft. 
“Why were its parents killed? A problem in ornithol- 
ogy was to be solved. A pair of grackles must be col- 
lected, and only a mated pair! to prove whether the 
bronze and Florida grackles interbreed, or whether they 
belong to different species. Three mated pairs have al- 
ready been collected, and there has yet been found no 
crossing of the two species; hence the conclusion is that 
they do not mate except with their own kind. This was 
a cruel task and one which will be pursued no more by 
me. It was done at the suggestion of Professor Robert 
Ridgway of Washington City.” 
The next paragraph, dated June 11, 1890, gives the 
catalog numbers of the six mated birds sent to Mr. Ridg- 
way and the exact localities where the specimens were 
collected. There is also a short discussion of relation- 
ships, but this is substantially the same as the published 
notes of 1891, already quoted. 
“1891. March 22, The crow blackbirds taken on May 
20th, 1890, and June 4th and 5th of the same year, lived 
harmoniously together till they were full grown when 
