196 



Ridgway on Variation in Oreortyx pictus. 



r Auk 



L July 



Although confident that no mistake had been made in the 

 diagnoses of the two forms and equally certain that the differences 

 were not sexual, I have taken the trouble to again carefully 

 examine all the specimens accessible to me with the view of 

 testing the single character of the color of the hind neck — a 

 character never claimed by me to be of more than secondary 

 importance — and have tabulated the results, which are given 

 below. Only specimens whose sex was determined by the 

 collector are used, and the series was divided, previous to 

 examination as to color of neck, into two series according to the 

 geographical area represented. It will be seen by examination 

 of these tables that the character is not sexual, and that it is, as 

 claimed by me, to a large extent geographical. When the 

 character in question fails as an index of locality, other charac- 

 ters do not ; grav-naped birds from the Pacific coast being 

 altogether more saturated in their coloration than b rown-naped 

 examples from the interior and southern coast districts. 



Specimens from Northern Coast District (north of San 

 Francisco Bay). 



1 Both Portland and Sodaville are situated in the valley between the Coast Range 

 and Cascades. These localities are, therefore, intermediate. 



