144 Dwight on the Horned Larks. [April 



3. Otocoris alpestris praticola Hensh. Prairie 

 Horned Lark. 



' Habitat. — Upper Mississippi Valley and region of theGreat 

 Lakes. 



This bird is a miniature leucolcema, somewhat darker, and with 

 a pale yellow chin which is seldom bright, and is often white. Au- 

 tumn birds seem to show more linear spots on the breast than 

 do the other forms, but this is not a constant feature. It 

 seems to have gradually extended its range eastward as the 

 woods have disappeared, and we can see why it should be nearer to 

 leucolcetna than to alpestris. It has recently been found breed- 

 ing in Vermont and on Long Island, and either of these localities 

 is a long distance from Hudson's Bay or Newfoundland, and 

 mountains intervene. However, as we go westward we find a 

 direct gradation into arenicola, and this race passes directly into 

 leiicolcema. Now leucolaema passes into alpestris and some- 

 where in the Saskatchewan or Winnipeg regions we shall find, I 

 venture to say, breeding birds that might be referred to any one of 

 these four forms. It is birds that have wandered southward from 

 such a point as this that are most difficult to determine, even with 

 abundant material at hand for comparison. In winter praticola 

 visits South Cai-olina and central Texas, though it seems to be 

 largely resident throughout its range and at its northeastern limit in 

 New York is a very early breeder. There are no records of its 

 breeding south of southern Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, and its 

 western range pi'actically coincides with the line where prairie 

 ceases and plains begin, which is also nearly coincident with the 

 north and south line of twenty inches annual rain-fall, passing 

 through central Manitoba, Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. 



Strange as it may seem, it is a fact that several breeding birds 

 from Carson, Nevada, must be considered of this race. Typical 

 arenicola of the arid, elevated region of the Plains and Great 

 Basin grades oft' to the eastward into -praticola, a bird of moist, 

 grassy regions, and to the westward into the Carson praticola, a 

 bird of the eastern slopes of the Sierras, which are known to have 

 about the same rain-fall as the prairies. The mountains form a 

 barrier to the westward, and there is no intergradation with rubca, 

 the race just across them in California. This, fortunately, per- 

 il tps, prevents further complication and we may call it a case of 



