242 Dwight, Larus hyperboreus. I April 



rank of a subspecies at least. Even a subspecies must prove to be 

 fairly constant in a more or less definite range. The range of 

 viridigularis is very imperfectly known; the four specimens, 

 referable to this form, that I have seen were taken at Nijni Kolymsk, 

 Siberia, St. George Island, Bering Sea, Nome and Saint Michael, 

 Alaska; Dr. Dwight's specimens all came from northeastern Siberia. 

 The Nijni Kolymsk bird, referred to above, is somewhat inter- 

 mediate between viridignlaris and arctica; if it had been taken in 

 Europe it would probably be referred to the latter. I also have a 

 perfectly typical pacifica from the Kolyma River, Siberia. 



I have seen birds from Victoria, B. C, from Finland and from 

 Norway which closely approach this new form, viridigularis, in 

 size and color characters. If we had a larger series of arctica from 

 Europe and Asia available for comparison, we could perhaps match 

 these birds exactly and we could certainly show, if I have not 

 already demonstrated it, that viridigularis is merely a subspecies 

 of arctica. To use Dr. Dwight's own terms, the green throat seems 

 to be a quantitative rather than a qualitative character. 



REASONS FOR DISCARDING A PROPOSED RACE OF 

 THE GLAUCOUS GULL (LARUS HYPERBOREUS). 



BY JONATHAN DWIGHT, M. D. 



In discussing the moults and plumages of the Glaucous Gull, 

 a dozen years ago I took occasion to bury "Larus barrovianus" 

 among the synonyms of Larus hyperboreus (then known as glaucus) 

 because the alleged characters seemed to me to afford insufficient 

 grounds for recognizing even a subspecies (Auk, XXIII, 1906, 

 p. 29). Later, in the 1910 edition of the A. O. U. 'Check-List,' 

 the Committee on Nomenclature and Classification adopted my 

 view of the case and discarded "barrovianus"; but recently Dr. 

 H. C. Oberholser has seen fit to dig it up and it is revived, somewhat 

 impressively, as a subspecies of hyperboreus (Auk, XXXV, 1918, 

 p. 472). 



