510 NOTES ON SOME OF THE 



tiful songster so admirably harmonize. This bird I repeat- 

 edly recognized from the peculiarity of its notes during 

 iny several days stay at this locality. Aside from such 

 unusual variations as this, which we may consider as acci- 

 dental, birds of unquestionably the same species, as the 

 Crow, the Blue Jay, the Towhe and others, at remote local- 

 ites, as New England, Florida, Iowa, etc., often possess 

 either general differences in their notes and song, easily 

 recognizable, or certain notes at one of these localities never 

 heard at the others, or an absence of some that are else- 

 where familiar. This is perhaps not a strange fact, since it 

 is now so well known that birds of the same species present 

 certain well marked variations in size according to the lati- 

 tude and elevation above the sea of the locality at which 

 they were born, and that they vary considerably , though 

 doubtless within a certain range, in many structural points 

 at one and the same locality. In other words, since it is 

 known that all the different individuals of a species are not 

 exactly alike, as though all were cast in the same die, as 

 some naturalists appear to have believed. 



Certain irregularities in the breeding range of birds have 

 also come to light. It is perhaps not remarkable that a pair 

 of birds of species that regularly breed in northern New 

 England should now and then pass the summer and rear 

 their young in the southern part, as has been the case in 

 certain known instances in the Snow Bird (Junco hyemalis), 

 the Pine Finch (Chrysomitris pinus) , and the White-throated 

 Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) ; but it is otherwise with 

 the Snow Bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis), which rarely 

 breeds south of Labrador, of which there is a single well 

 authenticated instance of its breeding near Springfield. The 

 casual visits of northern birds in winter, which we may 

 suppose sometimes results from their being driven south by 

 want of food or the severity of the season, are also less 

 remarkable, it appears to me, than the occurrence here of 

 southern species, as of the two Egrets, the Little Blue Heron 



