144 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 578. 



eastern United States, as West Virginia, Mis- 

 souri and Kansas, it is not probable that they 

 woiild differ enough f<om the northern birds 

 to be easily distinguishable from them. The 

 introduction of birds from Florida and the 

 Gulf Coast has not been in favor with sports- 

 men's clubs, owing to their small size and 

 their probable inability to withstand such a 

 radical change in climatic conditions. 



It may be added, as vaguely bearing on this 

 point, that some years ago (in 1889) a prom- 

 inent New York ornithologist (now deceased) 

 received four skins of quail (two pairs) said 

 to have come from South Dakota, which so 

 greatly differed from the other forms of quail 

 known to him that he looked upon them as a 

 new species, of which he prepared a description 

 for publication under the name Colinus 

 dakotensis. As they were small and dark, 

 they were later compared with quail from 

 southern Florida and found to be practically 

 the same, and the supposed new species was 

 suppressed. The conclusion reached was that 

 these peculiar South Dakota quail had been 

 imported from Florida; but whether these 

 birds were part of the original importation or 

 from a later generation was never satisfactorily 

 established, and the case is, therefore, without 

 special significance in this connection. The 

 following, however, has a rather direct bearing 

 upon the matter at issue. 



In Cuba there is an indigenous species or 

 subspecies of quail {Colinus virginianus cuban- 

 ensis), nearest to the Florida form (C. v. 

 floridanus) , but differing from it in a marked 

 degree. According to the late Dr. Gundlach' 

 quail were introduced into Cuba about one 

 hundred years ago, from just where is not 

 stated, but most probably from Florida. And 

 there doubtless have been other importations 

 since. In 1892 Mr. Franli M. Chapman, of 

 the American Museum of Natural History (to 

 whom I am indebted for the suggestion of this 

 ease), collected specimens of the indigenous 

 form and of a form impossible to distinguish 

 from the Florida bird. These latter were un- 

 doubtedly descendants of birds long previously 

 introduced into Cuba from Florida, which 



' Journ. fiir. Orn., XXII. Jahrg., Juli, 1874, pp. 

 300-303. „ 



for many generations had maintained in a 

 large degree the characters of the Florida bird. 

 There also occur in Cuba quail that are inter- 

 mediate in characters between the true Cuban 

 form and the Florida form, due possibly to 

 interbreeding, but also possibly to the action 

 of environment upon the introduced Florida 

 stock. 



There are, however, good reasons for believ- 

 ing that the eggs of small southern forms of 

 widely dispersed species would not, if taken to 

 northern localities, hatch into large birds like 

 those of the new region to which the eggs were 

 transferred. For not only does the size of 

 the bird, in species of wide latitudinal range, 

 decline southward, but also (very naturally) 

 the size of their eggs; and there is, further- 

 more, as a rule, a reduction in the number 

 forming the set, as made known by me in 

 1876,° mainly on the basis of information 

 furnished by the late Major Charles Bendire, 

 than whom there is no higher authority on the 

 eggs of North American birds. Thus eggs of 

 the cowbird from New England average 23 x 16 

 mm., and those from Arizona 19 x 14.7 mm. 

 It is perhaps of interest to note that in the 

 American tropics the number of eggs in a set, 

 in most passerine birds, is two or three, while 

 in temperate North America the number is 

 four or five, five occurring here about as fre- 

 quently as three in the tropics. 



A word now as to ' ontogenetic species,' and 

 ' species ' and ' subspecies.' President Jordan 

 apparently has, as already said, a different 

 concept for subspecies from that of those who 

 first gave currency to the term. The names 

 of all groups in biology are of course con- 

 ventional terms, employed by common consent 

 as a convenient means of arbitrarily designa- 

 ting groups of greater or lesser comprehen- 

 siveness, and having definite relations to each 

 other in any taxonomic system. In intro- 

 ducing the trinomial system of nomenclature, 

 in 1886, the A. O. U. committee on nomencla- 

 ture stated ° that this system, as a matter of 



' ' Geographical Variation in the Number and 

 Size of the Eggs of Birds,' Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, 

 I., 1876, pp. 74, 75. 



° ' A. 0. U. Code of Nomenclature and Check- 

 List of North American Birds,' 1886, p. 31. 



