200 Bergtold, The Crow in Colorado. [April 



to have overlooked these records and I am sure his silence was judi- 

 ciously intentional and premeditated. 



It thus appears that between 1887 and 1912 the Crows of Colo- 

 rado had been recorded by some observers, so far as subspecies 

 were concerned, as brachyrhynchos, and by others as hesperis, 

 but so far as 1 know and am able to learn, none suggested or 

 recorded that these two subspecies coexisted in the State. 



I am inclined to believe that Sclater's (13) designating the Colo- 

 rado Crow as hesperis was made on purely geographical grounds, 

 because the collection then at his command, (that at Colorado 

 College, Colorado Springs) contains but one crow skin, a partial 

 albino, which proves to be, under examination, subspecies brachy- 

 rhynchos. E. R. Warren allows me to state that he has no Crow 

 skins in his collection, and that he made his subspecific diagnosis 

 of hesperis, for the birds seen near Bulah, Colorado, on geographic 

 grounds only. In later records Warren (14) wisely refrains from 

 trying to decide as to the subspecies, when listing the Crows seen 

 in Montrose County, and in northern Colorado, mentioning the 

 birds merely as Corvus brachyrhynchos, and Henderson (18) did 

 likewise in his Boulder County List. 



1 do not know on what grounds Hersey and Rockwell (11) made 

 their statement that subspecies hesperis was to be found on the 

 eastern slope of the Rockies. 



Since Cooke's last word on our Colorada avifauna, two more 

 writers have given the Crow as a species found within the State, 

 each listing it as hesperis, and both records are for the Atlantic 

 slope. I am permitted by F. C. Lincoln (15), the first of these 

 two writers, to say that he did not take any Crows in Yuma County, 

 and that he made his subspecific diagnosis on geographic grounds 

 alone. It is now , unhappily, impossible to determine what led Betts 

 (16), the second of these two writers, to conclude that the Boulder 

 County Crow was hesperis. I do not know whether he collected 

 specimens in Boulder County; but Junius Henderson informs me 

 that Betts sent crow eggs to the National Museum. But he prob- 

 ably did not send skins for, as has already been said, there is not a 

 Crow skin in the National Museum collection, from Colorado. The 

 internal evidence (18) points to the belief that Betts too, recorded 

 the Boulder County Crow as hesperis, on geographic grounds alone. 



