THE IPSWICH SPARROW. 29 
Ipswich Sparrow was purchased from the collector, Mr. Clothrie [it should 
be Clothier] Pierce, for a Western Grass Finch, and it was so labelled 
until the day I picked out your series of Sparrows, when I detected its true 
identity.’ This largely extends the habitat of this comparatively new species, 
heretofore only recognized on the sand hills of the Atlantic Coast.” A 
couple of years later this record was challenged in Cooke’s ‘ Bird Migration 
in the Mississippi Valley’ (p. 188), where it is stated ‘*there is reason to 
suspect that the specimen really came from the coast of New England, the 
error having arisen from a transposition of labels.” I have carefully 
examined the specimen, and investigated its history as far as possible. It 
is apparently a female prznuceps, judging by size (not a male as the label 
indicates), although it certainly resembles quite closely one or two extremely 
pale male specimens of the Western Savanna Sparrow occurring among 
some two hundred examined. Now, Mr. Pierce’s labels were ordinary 
tags, and they were notoriously loosely tied. Many came off entirely, and 
his lot of birds from Texas is said to have lain in the drawers of one New 
England dealer before it passed into the hands of another from whom 
Mr. Sennett obtained the specimen. Dealers are fallible, even with the 
best of intentions. A loose Texas label accidentally attached to an 
unlabelled Ipswich Sparrow, of which there were said to have been a 
number in near proximity, is a far more plausible explanation than 
to assume that an Ipswich Sparrow was found two hundred and fifty 
miles from the seacoast and over one thousand from the nearest, and 
most southern, point from which it has ever been recorded. Of course 
with wings such an excursion is not impossible, but it is scarcely con- 
ceivable that a northern, coast-frequenting species would make such a 
trip for pleasure, while a storm theory is hardly tenable, because storms 
carry our birds northward and eastward, not southward and westward. 
Resuming again the history of the species at the point where we 
digressed, we find Mr. Brewster saying of it in 1876 (Bull. N. O. C., 
p- 18): ‘*. . . the establishment of a fixed fact like that recently developed, 
of the regular seasonal appearance in considerable numbers of Passerculus 
princeps along our New England coast, cannot fail to prove of the utmost 
practical value to the ornithologist, and reflectant of great and lasting credit 
on the fortunate discoverer.” In 1878 Dr. J. A. Allen gave the Ipswich 
Sparrow in his list of birds of Massachusetts as a ‘‘ rare winter visitant, 
occurring chiefly near the coast. Has been met with from Prince 
Edward’s Island and New Hampshire to Long Island.” ‘* Prince Edward’s 
Island” must be a slip of the pen, for the species has never been taken 
there. In that year Dr. T. M. Brewer remarked that ‘‘the gradual 
accumulation of observations in reference to this new and rare species 
