338 Phillips, The Hawaiian Linnet. uuly 



sufficient for the purpose, but if this is so there has been a change 

 since that time, and the case is a very curious one. 



In the Museum of Comparative Zoology there is a series of 

 twelve male and six female Linnets collected by Flood Bros, on 

 Molokai in 1895 fifteen years before Mr. Grinnell's series was taken 

 by Miss Alexander on Molokai, Oahu and Maui. This series 

 shows (provided it was taken at random) that the species was at 

 that time nowhere near stability, and that there was almost as 

 great a range of color as in birds from Arizona and other parts of 

 the southwest, only the average color is of a much lighter shade. 

 Three of the males are poppy red to orange vermilion (Ridgway's 

 Manual of Colors, 1886), three of them are orange to orange ver- 

 milion, five are orange to cadmium-orange, and one is pure cad- 

 mium yellow. In most of these birds the feathers are of mixed 

 tints, that is, at least two colors occur on one bird. Most of these 

 birds, then, are well off color. There is no individual of the deep 

 crimson type. As a whole this series does not differ very markedly 

 from Mr. Grinnell's as far as one can judge without comparison. 

 The colors, being so subtle and mixed are not easily described. 



In the last paragraph of his paper Mr. Grinnell says that at the 

 present time "to assert emphatically any particular factor or 

 group of factors as the prime stimulus does not seem justifiable." 

 The name however, C. mutans, does assert or at least imply a 

 definite variation of an intrinsic, or germinal nature. The question 

 as to whether this slight alteration in a character already unstable 

 is deserving of special recognition in our nomenclature is an open 

 one, and certainly not for the writer to decide. It was the name 

 itself which first appeared to him as inappropriate. 



