I^O Stejxeger on the Goins Acanthi's. | April 



examined and described b}' Brewster were the winter plumage of 

 the same form. The Redpolls are rather difficult to determine from 

 descriptions, but if they all were so clear and thorough as those 

 of Mr. Brewster there would have been less confusion in this 

 group of birds. His statement that the specimens from New 

 England "will be found to differ from the ordinary-type \_Iinaria'\ 

 in being very much larger, with stouter, less acute bills, gene- 

 rally darker coloring, and especially darker, coarser streaking 

 beneath," will apply to rostrata^ as distinguished not only from 

 litiaria^ but also from true holboellii. 



Nevertheless, I do not agree with him in regarding Acanthis 

 rostrata as a 'distinct species.' The conclusion of Mr. Brew- 

 ster is easily explained, he probably having only the short-billed 

 linaria for comparison ; but as the measurements, given below, 

 show, there is a regular intergradation, and the Greenland bird can- 

 not be justly designated except as conspecific with the other forms. 

 It will therefore, after the common usage of American writers, 

 stand as A. linaria rostrata. This name does not quite express 

 the true relationship ; for if the trinominal nomenclature is 

 adopted in order to show that the two forms whose names are 

 combined intergrade, we should expect a combination like A. 

 holboellii rostrata on the one hand, and A. linaria holboellii on 

 the other. This is the course taken by Mr. Seebohm, and is a 

 point which merits earnest consideration. 



Here comes up a question about the first name of this form, 

 as I am inclined to believe that it may be Acanthis littaria 

 lanceolata (Selys) Dubois. In the ParzudakI Catalogue of 

 European Birds (.Paris, 1856) C. L. Bonaparte enumerated among 

 the Redpolls a Linaria groenlandica Bp. without giving any 

 diagnosis or description whatsoever. As it is a '•nomen midum'' 

 nothing can save it, although it evidently is no other bird than 

 the present, hornemannii being enumerated as canescens, and 

 there being only these species found in Greenland. Nor is 

 Gerbe's description* in that respect of any use, as it is published 

 six years later than Coues's rostratus. In the 'Rev. et Mag. 

 Zool.' (1857, P- 123), De Selys, in reviewing Bonaparte's 

 'Catalogue Parzudaki,' mentions the groenlandica as identical 



* "La Groenlandica serait particuliferement caracterisee par des taches lanceolees 

 noires et trfes-nombreuses sur la poitrine et sur les flancs" (Ornith. Europ., I, p. 293 

 Paris, 1867). 



