1915 J Phillips, Variation in English Sparrows. 51 



NOTES ON AMERICAN AND OLD WORLD ENGLISH 



SPARROWS. 



BY JOHN C. PHILLIPS. 



In the spring of 1911 I undertook to collect skins of Passer 

 domesticus from various parts of the United States with the object 

 of studying any possible geographical or climatic effects which the 

 species in its new surroundings might have undergone. For this 

 purpose I communicated with a number of collectors, both pro- 

 fessional and amateur (about forty in all) throughout the country, 

 but the answers and especially the number of skins received were 

 by no means encouraging. Many of these men had already gone 

 out of business; others could not kill sparrows in places where 

 these birds were confined to city limits; and still others no doubt 

 thought the pursuit of a few specimens of this inglorious and un- 

 remunerative species scarcely worth while. 



At the present my collection is stationary, and in these notes I 

 shall simply give the meagre results as far as they have progressed. 

 It is as well to state that although the enquiry was started as a 

 study in variation, it would be better with the data now at hand to 

 call it "A study of the stability of a species under wide-ranging 

 climatic and geographical conditions." 



In July, 1911, four hundred and forty-six enquiries were sent to 

 postmasters in the western states in order to get an idea of the 

 distribution of the English Sparrow since the map of Barrows, 

 1889, and also the length of residence of the species in various west- 

 ern districts. Three hundred and twenty-eight answers were 

 received, and these will be mentioned later. 



It is necessary at first to outline the native distribution of P. 

 domesticus and its subspecies, giving a brief diagnosis of these as 

 they are described by the latest authority on the Passerine birds 

 of Europe, Hartert's ' Die Vogel der Palearktichen Fauna.' Har- 

 tert says that P. domesticus is found over all of Europe except Italy, 

 where it is very rare (less so in Friaul and Udine) . In Scandinavia 

 beyond the Arctic Circle, all over the British Isles, but not on the 

 Faroes, Madeira, Azores or Canaries. All over Russia and Siberia 



