BREWSTER: BIRDS OF THE CAPE REGION, LOWER CALIFORNIA. 95 
group known to occur along the southwestern border of the United States, I 
have become convinced that the Lower California bird is not likely to have 
been derived from any of these races. It is, indeed, so very unlike all of them 
and so similar in general appearance to the Mexican form vinaceus that I regard 
it as most nearly related to, and probably a direct offshoot from, the latter. 
The two birds, zantust and vinaceus, with still another Mexican form, M. cooperi, 
appear to constitute what may be termed a subsection of the M. aszo group, for 
although differing from one another in size they have the same general pattern 
of color and marking. This pattern is, in certain respects, unlike that common 
to the various races of M. aso, the principal differences consisting in the exceed- 
ingly fine vermiculation and more or less pronounced pinkish tone of the 
plumage of all three of the Mexican birds just mentioned. I will further 
remark in this connection that the form trichopsis seems to me to be perfectly 
distinct, specifically, from M. aso. Indeed, I do not see how it can be other- 
wise regarded,-for it differs very strikingly from cineraceus, the only other 
representative of asco found in southern Arizona, where, moreover, both 
trichopsis and cimeraceus appear to breed together, or at least in close 
proximity. 
The sum as well as character of the differences which distinguish M. zantusi 
from the other members of the genus Megascops would not, in my estimation, war- 
rant its recognition as a full species were it not for the obvious and practically 
complete isolation of its habitat from the regions inhabited by all the others, 
and especially from the habitat of its nearest ally, M. vinaceus. Were it at all 
closely related to the California form, bendirei, we might safely assume that it 
is likely to meet and intergrade with the latter in the central or northern parts 
of the Peninsula, but the two are so very unlike that the possibility of such 
intergradation is not worth considering. 
Very little can be said at present regarding the distribution, and practically 
nothing concerning the habits, of this pretty little Screech Owl which I have 
named for the ornithologist by whom the first and hitherto only known speci- 
mens were obtained. Mr. Frazar did not meet with it, but it was, no doubt, 
the bird whose “tremulous notes” were heard at night by Mr. Belding at sev- 
eral of his camps in the Victoria Mountains as well as at Agua Caliente and 
_ Miraflores, and it may also have been the species with which Mr. Bryant had a 
similarly unsatisfactory experience “at the dry camp, Cardon Grande, and at 
El Rancho Viejo.” According to the observer last named, ‘“‘ Mr. Anthony has 
seen a screech owl on several occasions between Valladares and the coast,” but 
the bird of this region is most likely to be M. a. bendirei, which probably 
ranges southward into the northern portions of Lower California. 
