The Zoologist — Deckmber, 1873. 3793 



is entirely erroneous, as every one acquainted with these very 

 different species will admit. The other cases cited show only slight 

 (sometimes inappreciable) manifestations of this law within tlie terri- 

 tory of the United States. Thus none of my cases were " already 

 published," and, besides, all were in a new geographical field. 



The laws of variation with longitude, which Mr. Allen lays 

 down, are the following : — 



1. Brighter colours of the birds from the Interior, than of those 

 from the Atlantic States; with a tendency to more ferruginous 

 tints in some species and to melanism in others. 



2. Brighter or darker colours of the birds from the Pacific coast 

 (especially north of the 40th parallel) than of those from the 

 interior. 



3. Lighter colours of birds from the arid, sterile plains than of 

 those from either the eastward or the westward. 



By referring to this paper, it will be seen that all the above laws 

 are substantially the same as in the generalizations made by Pro- 

 fessor Baird in 1866, so that they were at the time of the publication 

 already "the common property of ornithologists;" while the 

 proposition that red areas " spread," or enlarge their field in pro- 

 portion as we trace certain species towards the Pacific coast, and 

 that in the same proportion ^fellow often intensifies in tint, is a law 

 of which Mr. Allen makes no mention, and which is, so far as he 

 is concerned, original with me; at the same time I claim originality 

 for the cases illustrating both this and the foregoing laws, though 

 I have never thought before of claiming either the generalizations 

 or the examples as discoveries of my own. 



Having given my defence as far as Mr. Allen is concerned, I 

 shall now attend to the cases in which I reduced previously recog- 

 nized "species" to the rank of geographical races, or "varieties," 

 " the implication being, that such nomenclature, and the views 

 sustaining it, are novel." Dr. Coues professes to have anticipated 

 me in several of these cases by using the same nomenclature in his 

 " Key," and other previous works. How far he is justified in this 

 it is my purpose to show. 



The case of Chrysomitris, Dr. Coues claims to have "first 

 worked out, in 1866 (Proc. Phil. Acad., 81), exactly as it is here 

 presented, although C. psaltria was not there formally brought into 

 this connection, as it has since been by us (Key, Oct., 1872, 132, 

 133)." How much Dr. Coues is entitled to make this assertion 



