1910] Grinnell.—Birds: Alaska Expedition, 1908. 399 
Passerculus sandwichensis alaudinus Bonaparte. 
Western Savannah Sparrow. 
Thirty-eight specimens secured (nos. 1472-1509). While the 
series includes many specimens taken in August and up to Sep- 
tember 2, and might be expected to contain transients, I find 
not even one example referable to P. s. sandwichensis. All seem 
to me to belong to a single subspecies which after much com- 
paring of specimens from various parts of North America, I 
am reluctantly placing under the name alaudinus, the breeding 
range of which ineludes the great Alaskan interior. The series 
includes twenty-five birds in worn breeding dress. These aver- 
age very close to, if not identical with, the subspecies of interior 
and northern Alaska, generally conceded to be alaudinus. Yet 
among them are dark-streaked, brownish individuals which I 
cannot distinguish from selected examples from the Sitkan dis- 
trict, which I have elsewhere (Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool., V, p. 227) 
allocated under the name Passerculus s. savanna. I have elected 
to eall these dark examples (from the Prince William Sound 
region) extremes of individual variation; for there is every in- 
termediate degree of blending towards the opposite extreme 
which is pale. The possibility presents itself of these dark birds 
being stragelers of savanna; the evidence is poor, but as far as 
it goes, indicates otherwise. 
Breeding Savannah sparrows, even taken in the same month, 
have obviously been subject to varying amounts of wear. And 
this further confuses the original variation in fresh plumages. 
I have been unable to find any clue by which to distinguish 
among breeding birds those which are only one year old (and 
henee have left-over portions of the juvenal and first winter 
plumages in combination with an unknown amount of body- 
plumage acquired at the first prenuptial molt) from truly adult 
birds, two years old or older. The problem is complex, and to 
distinguish races to a finer degree in this genus of sparrows as 
occupying Alaska does not now seem to me to be practicable. 
Eleven of the Prince William Sound Savannah sparrows 
were taken in the last two weeks of August, and are in complete 
winter plumage. Unfortunately age was not determined by the 
