142 University of California Ptihlications in Zoology [Vol.21 



Altogether there are at hand forty-six fox sparrows from Monterey, 

 including twenty-six of the Yakutat Bay race, seventeen sinuosa, and 

 one each of iliaca, itisularis, and rnegarhynchus. 



The name meruloides can be applied to one particular subspecies 

 only on the assumption that the chances are overwhelmingly against 

 any other race having been taken at the specified locality. As shown 

 by the recent collecting indicated above, while the one form is by far 

 the most abundant in the region, there is at least one other that occurs 

 in numbers. Altogether five subspecies are here recorded from that 

 place. Under the circumstances it seems to me that there can be no 

 absolute certainty as to the bird Vigors had in hand. On the contrary, 

 it seems apparent that there is no alternative but to discard Vigors' 

 name meruloides as undeterminable, as has been done by Ridgway 

 (1901, p. 390). That name is replaced by Passerella iliaca annectens 

 Eidgway (1900, p. 30), with type locality at Yakutat Bay, Alaska. 



There is another angle to the question, in that the winter birds 

 bearing the closest resemblance to Yakutat Bay specimens, botli as 

 regards color and bill structure, and making due allowance for seasonal 

 changes in color, are those from Marin County. The Yakutat speci- 

 mens at hand are all midsummer birds, taken a month or so prior to 

 the molt, but I can not conceive that these birds, even in the freshest 

 of plumage, ever presented the bright, ruddy appearance so frequently 

 seen in fall and winter specimens from the vicinity of Palo Alto and 

 of Monterey Bay. These latter seem to present an extreme of difFer- 

 entiation within this subspecies, both as regards bright color and 

 increased size of bill. Discovery of a definable summer range of birds 

 with these characters may necessitate the recognition of still another 

 race, with annectens occurring at Yakutat Bay in summer, and mainly 

 in the region immediately north of San Francisco Bay in winter. At 

 present, however, no such division can safely be made, but the birds 

 from the several points indicated must all be lumped as exemplifj'ing 

 the range of variation within the one subspecies. 



In the series of Passerella here accumulated, annectens, is abun- 

 dantly represented from many points near the coast, from Sonoma 

 County south through Monterey County, and by strikingly few speci- 

 mens from other parts of the state. Although this is such a common 

 winter bird in the San Francisco Bay region and in Marin County, 

 to the northward, it is almost entirely absent from the California 

 coast region but a little way farther north. In an extensive series 

 of fox sparrows from the Humboldt Bay region, but one example of 



