Widmann — A Preliminary Catalog of the Birds of Missouri. 159 



are best exhibited in the fall and are least apparent in the 

 breeding season, an unfortunate condition of affairs as every 

 systematist will readily recognize." Of a specimen in the col- 

 lection of the Biology Survey, a male taken July 13 at Golden 

 City, Mo., he writes: ^'S. magna apparently approaching 

 neglecta, but in too worn plumage to be satisfactorily determined." 

 And of a young bird taken at the same place on the same day : 

 "Apparently intermediate, the central tail-feathers abnormally 

 marked with white." What Mr. Chapman says of the song is 

 highly interesting: ''Some advocates of the specific distinctness 

 of the eastern and western Meadowlarks have attached much 

 importance to the marked and well-known differences in the 

 songs of these birds, and while these differences are doubtless 

 of value in making field identifications, they should not, I think, 

 be given importance by the systematist. Song is largely if 

 not wholly an uninherited character and is subject to great 

 individual and geographical variation. In both magna and 

 neglecta this statement is usually well illustrated by the wide 

 range of variation occurring in their respective songs. Dozens 

 of strikingly different songs of neglecta have been recorded, 

 its vocal powers have been described as being a ' husky whistle' 

 and as excelling those of the Nightingale; and while this differ- 

 ence is no doubt partially in the ear of the hearer, it nevertheless 

 attests a wide range of variability. Similar differences are to 

 be observed in the eastern Meadowlarks." Speaking of a series 

 of specimens from southern Texas, Mr. Chapman says: ''There 

 can be no doubt that they prove the complete intergradation of 

 magim and neglecta. Whether this intergradation is geograph- 

 ical, that is, correlated with climatic conditions, or whether it 

 is due to the interbreeding of typical examples of magna w^th 

 typical examples of neglecta, can only be determined by farther 

 field work." 



Mr. Chapman's paper concludes with the following very ac- 

 ceptable theory: "Assuming that Meadowlarks originated in 

 the humid tropics, we have, as the ancestral form, a dark bird, 

 which, spreading northward along the coast and over the Mexican 

 tablelands, retained its dark colors in humid regions and ac- 

 quired a paler color in arid regions. If the assumption of the 

 origin of both birds from a common ancestor be accepted and if 

 their geographical intergradation at the southern limits of the 

 range of neglecta be established, we are then in a position to 

 explain their apparent association as species in the more northern 



