UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 
ZOOLOGY 
Vol. 5, No. 9, pp. 311-316 February 21, 1910 
THE SAVANNAH SPARROW OF THE 
GREAT BASIN. 
BY 
JOSEPH GRINNELL. 
(Contribution from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of California.') 
The Savannah sparrows of western North America have 
caused considerable trouble to systematic ornithologists because 
of the large amount of variation exhibited and because of the 
consequent difficulties experienced in attempting to segregate 
subspecies. This has been due in a measure to the fact that 
the great majority of specimens in museums are winter birds. 
A winter series from California often consists of birds from at 
least two distant and widely separated breeding areas, mingled 
together so that the existing subspecifie distinctions are obscured 
through the overlapping of characters in a small proportion of 
examples as a result of individual variation. 
Series of summer specimens from breeding areas are now 
becoming available for study, and these show that there are 
really two or more distinct forms where but one was recognized 
before. This condition of affairs was clearly anticipated by 
Brewster, who says (Birds of the Cape Region of Lower Cali- 
fornia, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., XLI, 1902, p. 137 
dinus, like some of the other forms of the group to which if be- 
CON & ail 
longs, might not inaptly be termed a composite subspecies. In 
1 This is the third paper based primarily on the results of the 1909 
Alexander Expedition to Nevada. (See Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool., V, pp. 
275-281 and 283-302.) 
