4430 TueE ZooLocist—May, 1875. 
carrion crow, and others gray like the hooded crow; while some 
partook of the characters of both parents, the gray colour being 
reduced in quantity and irregularly disposed. One nest, which 
I met with at Elgin, had three in the brood entirely black, the 
other two black and gray. In that neighbourhood the mixed 
varieties are quite as common as the pure forms: some are 
almost full black, with only a slight admixture of gray on the back 
or shoulders; others are more or less gray below and entirely 
black above; indeed no two seem to be exactly alike. Of two 
examples that I shot, one might have passed for a carrion crow, it 
was so uniformly black, there being only a very little gray on the 
under parts of the body ; the other had a considerable patch of gray 
on the chest, but it graduated on all sides into black. In this case, 
as in many others, the central parts of the feathers were black, the 
margins gray; and towards the boundaries of the patch the central 
black portion increased, and thus the gray became blended and lost 
definition. The dark specimen proved on dissection to be a female, 
the gray one te be a male. The female was evidently a breeding 
bird. The reproductive organs in both cases were in a perfectly 
healthy and fully developed state, and in no way resembled those 
of hybrids. In the district where this intermingling of the two 
forms occurs, the inhabitants look upon them as mere varieties of 
the hooded crow. Mr. Charles St. John, in bis interesting work on 
‘Natural History and Sport in Mora,’ says, ‘Though the carrion 
crow is not supposed to be an inhabitant of this part of the country 
(speaking of the neighbourhood of Elgin), it is impossible to decide 
upon the line which divides the two birds, the black carrion and 
the hooded crow. No doubt the hooded crow is the commonest 
species here, but I have taken some trouble in examining these 
birds, and have killed crows in every shade of plumage, from pure 
black to the perfectly marked hooded crow, and this without 
reference to age or sex.’ This author then goes on to say that 
‘the hooded crow is the crow of that country,’ and evidently looks 
upon the black individuals as mere varieties. The same indis- 
criminate interbreeding of these two forms takes place in Aber- 
deenshire. The late Mr. J. Hepburn kindly sent to me the ‘ Notes 
of his Observations’ on the subject, made a few miles north of 
Aberdeen, on the estate of his relative, Sir James D. K. Elphin- 
stone, with liberty to make what use of them I pleased. Mr. 
Hepburn says, ‘ Every one acquainted with those parts of Scotland 
