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THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 




Vou. XIII.) DECEMBER, 1889. [No. 156. 


ON THE EASTERN AND WESTERN FORMS OF THE 
NUTCRACKER.* 
By LronHarD STEJNEGER. 
Having recently been asked by Baron von Tschusi-Schmid- 
hoffen to express an opinion in regard to the races of Nucifraga 
caryocatactes, I shall not attempt a full analysis of the whole 
question, but only review the material in my hands, as it may 
throw some light on the subject. 
Brehm was the first to clearly define the two races of Nut- 
crackers, which most ornithologists who have studied the question 
are now willing to admit. He was, however, unable to assign to 
them definite and distinct habitats; and partly because the shape 
of the bill, which is the principal characteristic of the two races, 
is in itself subject to great individual variation as well as to 
considerable changes on account of wear and tear, partly on 
account of the unreasonable prejudice of ornithologists concerning 
the forms described by Brehm, the races or subspecies in question 
were either misunderstood, or entirely ignored for more than half 
a century. When, in 1872, I examined and measured a number 
of Nutcrackers in the museums of Bergen and Christiania for 
the monograph of Von Tschusi-Schmidhoffen,+ I laboured under 
the same impression, viz., that because both thick-billed and 
slender-billed specimens occurred in Norway there could not well 
be any racial difference. But after the elaborate monograph of 
* Proc. U.S. Nat. Museum, 1889, pp. 425—432. 
+ ‘ Der Tannenheher (Nucifraga caryocatactes).’ Dresder, 1873, p. 4. 
ZOOLOGIST.—DEC. 1889. 2M 
