310 Mr. H. Seebohm on Merula torquata. 



ten the variation from the normal type was only an example 

 of individual variation ; but here and there he accidentally 

 described an example belonging to a new species, or an 

 unrecognized geographical race. Not that the slightest 

 credit attaches to Brehm for these happy accidents ; and so 

 far from " the fashion to sneer at the species and subspecies " 

 of this writer being an " unfortunate " one, and the " ignor- 

 ing of his names without further investigation " being an 

 "injustice," one can only congratulate ornithologists that 

 most of them, his compatriots included, have fortunately 

 taken so just a view of his merit. There is no merit in de- 

 scribing even a good species. Darwin was perfectly right 

 when he wrote ('Life and Letters/ i. p. 371), '^ I think a 

 very wrong spirit runs through all natural history, as if 

 some merit w^as due to a man for merely naming and defining 

 a species ; I think scarcely any or none is due ; if he works 

 out minutely and anatomically any one species, or syste- 

 matically a whole group, credit is due, but I must think the 

 mere defining a species is nothing." It is not very easy to 

 estimate the amount of discredit which attaches to a man 

 who described perhaps five hundred bad species. Brehm 

 described no fewer than six species and subspecies of the 

 Bing Ouzel, Merula torquata, to which he gave the names 

 Merula alpestris, M. vociferans, M. maculata, M. insignis, 

 M. montana, and M. coUaris ; and of these Dr. Stejneger 

 expresses the opinion (Proc. United States Nat. Mus. 1886, 

 p. 365) that two must be regarded as distinct species. 



For the last year or more I have been accumulating evi- 

 dence on this interesting question, and I have arrived at 

 the following results : — 



The Ring Ouzel may be subdivided into at least three local 

 races ; but intermediate forms between them occur so often 

 that none of the three can be regarded as more than sub- 

 specifically distinct. The British, Vosges, and Scandinavian 

 form may be regarded as the typical one. In Central Europe, 

 in the pine regions of the Carpathians and their outlying 

 ranges in Bohemia &c., in the iVlps, the Apennines, the 

 Pyrenees, and the Spanish Sierras, M. torquata alpestris 



