﻿78 FIELD AND FOREST. 



Washington ornithologists that led me to regard L. australis as repre- 

 senting only the breeding dress of the Southern form of L. tephrocotis, 

 after I had gone so far as to formally describe it as a variety, making 

 the suppression in my last revise of the proof-sheets of that part of the 

 "Ornithological Reconnoisance." With my specimens before them, 

 the authors of " North American Birds " say that " it seems very reason- 

 able to suppose that these specimens represent the breeding plumage of 

 that [Z. tephrocotis~\ species," — the theory I at first entertained and 

 finally adopted. It thus appears that even Mr. Ridgway's opinions 

 have considerably changed in four years, respecting the character of 

 the " different forms " of Leucosticte. \ He ignores, however, the fact 

 that one of the forms (L. '" campestris " ) to which I referred in 

 1872, as possibly founded on individual variation, he himself, in 1875, 

 regarded as " unstable as a race, from the fact that scarcely two speci- 

 mens are alike." Mr. Ridgway's commendable acuteness in recently 

 relegating certain specimens, from my description of them in 1872, to 

 his several species and varieties, results from the examination of a large 

 amount of material not accessible to any one at the time I wrote. L. 

 u atrata' n is now the only "form" of Leucosticte, respecting the 

 character of which we now differ, and this, Mr. Ridgway admits is 

 " possibly, but but not probably a melanism of L. tephrocotis.' 1 '' The 

 apparent difference between us on the subject of species and varieties 

 in this group results simply from his choosing to quote my opinions of 

 1872 as being those of 1876. 



In saying that the measurements, given in my late article, (1. c, pp. 

 349, 350,) "were made by the collector from fresh specimens, and as 

 the sex of each specimen was determined by actual dissection, they are 

 of special interest in the present connection," I intended no reflection 

 whatever upon the "experience" and "veracity" of Mr, Ridgway's 

 correspondents, the remark having the most evident allusion to the 

 fact that in only a relatively small proportion of the specimens of which 

 he gave measurements was the sex indicated. 



The sweeping charge Mr. Ridgway brings of the almost total unre- 

 liability of my scientific work I do not feel called upon to further 

 notice, the spirit animating his whole article being in itself a sufficient 

 reply. Yet I may thank Mr. Ridgway for thus giving me a favorable 



\ In his last notice of the group, (this Journal, September, 1876,) he raises Z. 

 griseimicha from a " variety " of L. tephrocotis to the rank of a distinct species. 



