Vol 'i^*> XVI l Bergtold, The Crow in Colorado. 199 



there is not a single Crow skin in either the National Museum, or 

 in the Biological Survey Collections, which came from Colorado. 



Most, if not all, of the writers who thereafter, directly or indU 

 rectly, touched on the Crow's position in Colorado, made their 

 diagnoses as to subspecies on regional grounds alone. 



In the interval between Ridgway's erection of subspecies lies peris, 

 and its admittance to the A. O. U. 'Check List' (1887 to 1908) 

 Morrison (8) and Drew (19) were, so far as I know, the only writers 

 to record the Crow in Colorado, Morrison mentioning it first, as 

 Corvus jrugivorus and the second time (9) as Corvus americanus, 

 while Drew entered his record under the latter name. 



Cooke's 'List of the Birds of Colorado' was published in March 

 1897, and in it he grouped all of the previous Colorado Crow records, 

 regardless of region, under the name Corvus americanus; notwith- 

 standing that Ridgway had ten years previously separated the 

 eastern and the western Crows, Cooke (22) logically disregarded 

 this action, because he followed the A. O. U. 'Check-List' in 

 assembling his ' List of Colorado Birds.' In all the various supple- 

 ments which Cooke published to his list (the last being in 'The 

 Auk' of October 1909) he did not change his early naming of the 

 Colorado Crows, allowing them to stand as Corvus americanus 

 or its synonym. 1 am confident that he recognized the probability 

 of there being two subspecies in the State, but wisely refrained 

 from opening the question because of lack of material available 

 for definite determination. Furthermore I am given to under- 

 stand that there are no Crow skins in the collections of the State 

 Agriculture College at Fort Collins, where Cooke was located when 

 he compiled his 'List,' which fact would lend support to the idea 

 that his omission to mention the possibility of both the Eastern 

 and the Western Crows being found in Colorado was due to his 

 unwillingness to pass judgment on a question without the support 

 of definite material or data. 



In his 'The Present Status of the Colorado Check-List of Birds' 

 (10), Cooke again was silent as to the presence of subspecies brachy- 

 rynchos or of hesperis or of both within the confines of Colorado, 

 though at least three writers (11), (12), (13), had previously men- 

 tioned the Colorado Crow in their respective papers, as being 

 hesperis; Cooke was too careful and experienced an ornithologist 



