OF THE ROCK PTARMIGAN PIERS 7 



vol. 22), Lond., 1893, p. 50, after referring to reinhardi, welchi, 

 and other related forms, under the head of L. rupestris, says: 

 "of the greater number of these supposed different species, we 

 have seen a dozen examples, and of the rest there are excellent 

 figures and descriptions. After going over all the facts very 

 carefully and allowing for very slight individual differences 

 and climatic variations, we cannot see the slightest object to 

 be gained in cataloguing under endless names what are clearly 

 only forms of one species, especially as L. rupestris, taken as 

 a whole, appears to be barely specifically distinct from L. mutus 

 [of Europe]." 



The scholarly Dr. Coues, who chafed under much of the 

 "hair-splitting" tendencies of American ornithologists of his 

 time, says of Lagopus in his Key to North American Birds, 5th 

 ed., 1903, vol, 2, p. 743: "Specific characters founded upon 

 coloui- alone are peculiarly fallacious in this genus. We have 

 three well known good species, one of them with several alleged 

 sub-species; I record all these, also the three other North Amer- 

 ican forms, without vouching for any, excepting L. lagopus, 

 L. rupestris, and /,. leucurus.''^ 



I understand that P. A. Taverner, naturalist of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of Canada, is inclined to somewhat agree with 

 Ogilvie-Grant and Coues, being skeptical as to whether welchi 

 should be specifically separated from rupestris. 



It seems to me time that welchi should be considered un- 

 tenable as a separate species, and that its very close relation- 

 ship with rupestris, from which it cannot be separated in 

 winter plumage, should at least relegate it to sub-specific rank 

 as at present a mere geographical, non-migratory, insular race, 

 with a more southern habitat, of that species, under the varietal 

 name Lagopus rupestris welchi, as has already been done by 

 Blasius in 1862 with Brehm's Tetrao reinhardi of 1823. This 

 seems to be the more necessary, when we have seen that some 

 systematists even go so far as to think that/,, rupestris, taken 

 as a group, is barely specifically distinct from the European 

 L. mutus. 



