314 BRITISH BIRDS. 



Europe shows that the two forms are easily distinguish- 

 able. As they lie on the table in two rows, one sees 

 at a glance that the British race is darker in colour : the 

 throat and chest are of a somewhat darker grey, the 

 abdomen is less whitish, the flanks slightly darker, so 

 that the brown stripes are less evident. There is no 

 constant difference in the colour of the upper surface, 

 though generally it is not so bright, less rufescent than 

 in continental, especially Swedish, specimens. These 

 slight colour-differences are more marked in the males, 

 less apparent in the females. Besides these differences 

 in colour some structural ones are much more striking : the 

 bill is in most cases thicker, more powerful in the British 

 birds ; the structure of the wing is different : the second 

 primary is only slightly longer than the seventh, i.e., 

 about 1 to 3 mm., mostly only 1 to 2 mm., and sometimes 

 no longer, but equal to the seventh. This is obvious in 

 every specimen before me, with the exception of one from 

 Spurn Head, shot on September 7th, 1882, by the Rev. 

 H. H. Slater ; this specimen also being rather pale on 

 the underside, there can be no doubt that it is a migrant, 

 probably from Scandinavia or Denmark. 



In Accentor modularis modularis, on the other hand, 

 the second primary is much, i.e., from 4 to 6 mm. and even 

 7 mm., longer than the seventh, which is more obviously 

 shorter than the sixth. The wings of all the continental 

 Hedge-Sparrows which I have examined agree in this 



remarks (translated) : — " Accentor modularis (L.). In the literature 

 I find very little about the rather interesting climatic variation of this 

 species, which becomes browner and browner proceeding eastwards 

 from England to Japan, so that the very light British birds might 

 perhaps be opposed as a special subspecies, which could be called 

 sclateri, to the more brownish continental, and especially the much more 

 rufous Japanese form rubidus. " Unfortunately, however, the British 

 form is not lighter, but darker in colour, and therefore it is very doubtful 

 if the late Dr. Prazak had ever seen a specimen, having made the 

 above remarks before his sojourn in Edinburgh. As his writings have 

 been proved to be full of inaccuracies — the unfortunate author in- 

 vented stories, persons, collections and species — this may account for 

 his erroneous statement, which is rendered worse by the assertion 

 that Bohemian Hedge-Sparrows often resemble almost completely the 

 picture of rubidus in the " Fauna Japonica." 



