3 88 Nelson, Certain North American Galtince. \o^\ 



Meleagris gallopavo LiJin. In reply to my surmise that this 

 name should be referred to the birds which the Spaniards intro- 

 duced into continental Europe (and which were taken thence to 

 England) probably from the mountains of Vera Cruz, Mr. Grant 

 ''cannot see any possible ground for such a supposition," and 

 says "the fact remains that the 'Turkey Cock' figured by Albin 

 in 1740, on which the Linnaean name was founded, can only have 

 been of West or North Mexican origin." To give thus positively 

 the exact origin of the bird from which Albin's crude, diagram- 

 matic figure of a domestic turkey is taken is pure assumption — 

 for Albin says not a word on the subject. 



Meleagris gallopavo merriami Nelson. Mr. Grant states 

 that by contrasting my specimens of this bird with examples of 

 M. gallopavo and M. americana and avoiding a comparison with 

 M. g. intermedia (with which he says it is "obviously synony- 

 mous") I would have it considered very distinct. As a matter of 

 fact I did compare the series of merriami with a series of intermedia 

 before describing the former, but in the preliminary description 

 only published the results of the comparisons with the two forms 

 with which there was or might have been a possible contiguity of 

 range. M. g. merriami and AT. g. intermedia occupy very dis- 

 tinct faunal areas separated by a broad belt of desert country 

 unsuited to any form of Meleagris. 



The Committee on Nomenclature of the American Ornitholo- 

 gists' Union has recently compared AT. g. merriami with fts rela- 

 tives — including M. g. intermedia — -and found it to be distinct, 

 while Mr, Grant does not claim ever to have seen a specimen of 

 this form. 



Dendrortyx oaxacae, D. macrourus griseipectus, D. mac- 

 rourus striatus and D, macrourus dilutus. Our collection 

 contains twelve specimens of these birds instead of four. Further- 

 more my familiarity with the region in which the various forms of 

 this bird occur enables me to affirm positively that the differences 

 upon which these birds were described have a definite geographic 

 significance. 



Callipepla gambeli fulvipectus. This form is rejected 

 because Mr. Grant has examined a specimen of a female bird 

 from Hermosillo, Sonora, and finds it the same as C. gambeli I 



