312 BIRDS — LANIID^. 



oianus and excubitoroides look very different, but they are observed to melt into eao'n other 

 when many specimens are compared, so that no specific character can be assigned,' and 

 if the doctor had substituted the term varietal for specifio, he would have hit equally 

 near the truth The fact is, there is so little difference between Eastern examples of 

 exGuMtoroides and the Southern bird that they have often been confounded, aud it is 

 practically almost impossible to distinguish them. My own opinion is that the locality 

 whence the specimen came furnishes the most valuable clew to its identity. In a 

 young male taken by Mr. Dayan at Lyon's Falls, Lewis county, New York, September 

 4, 1877, the light ash of the upper parts contrasts strongly with the 'dark plumbeous- 

 ash' of typical Southern examples of liidovicianua in the cabinet of Mr. George N. Law- 

 rence, to whose kindness I am indebted for the comparison, and for many other favors. 

 In other respects the bird more closely approaches the Southern form. The Western 

 bird breeds abundantly in Ohio (Wheaton)aad was first observed in Canada West (near 

 Hamilton) by Mr. Mcll wraith about the year i860, since which date it has bred regularly 

 in that locality. Allen, in 1889, published in the 'American Naturalist' (p. 579) the first 

 record of its breeding in New Tork State (near Buffalo), and Rathbun gives it as 

 breeding at Auburn, in the central portion of the State. Fred. J. Davis, Esq., 

 informs mo that he has taken several of its nests in the vicinity of Utica, and 

 the fact of its breeding in Lewis county completes its range to the Adirondacks. Be- 

 yond this barrier it is not, to my knowledge, found, excepting as a rare straggler; and 

 most of the New England specimens have commonly been regarded as accidental visitors 

 from the South. Mr. Purdie, however, in this Bulletin (Vol. II, No. 1, page 21, 1877), 

 records the capture of a 'typical' specimen of var. excubitoroides at Craubton, E. I., Sep- 

 tember 2, 1873, by Fred. T. Jencks. This is, ao far as I am aware, the only recognized 

 instance of the capture of the Western form in New England. As a pretty conclusive 

 proof that our New York bird has been derived from the Western (excubitoroides) "type," 

 we have the fact of the continuity of its range eastward from the Mississippi to the 

 Adirondacks (through Ohio to Buffalo, Auburn, Utica, and Lewis county, New York) j 

 while, on the other hand, its entire absence from those portions of the State where the 

 Carolinian Fauna is most marked (notably along the Hudson Kiver, where such charac- 

 teristic birds as Icteria virens, Myiodioctea mitratua, Selmitheeua nermivorxts, and Siurus 

 motaciUa breed in abundance) is sufBoient evidence that it is not the Southern bird. 

 That it does not occur in the region above specified is pretty clearly shown by the fact 

 that neither Edgar A. Mearns (of Highland Falls, near West Point) nor Eugene P. Bick- 

 nell (of Kiverdale), two of our most enterprising young collectors, have ever met with 

 even a single straggler of the genus, other than C borealis, although they have both 

 made the birds of the Hudson Eiver Valley a special study." 



Thus it appears that this variety has extended its range eastward from 

 the Mississippi Valley mainly along the basin of the Great Lakes, 

 though a comparison of the citations of both varieties of recent dates 

 shows that not even the locality now furnishes a clew to assist in identi- 

 fication. Mr. Langdon, in Bull. Nutt. Club, iv, 1879, 120, gives the fol- 

 lowing note on this variety in Southwestern Ohio: 



" On the 22d of August, 1878, 1 took a well-marked example of GoUurio ludomcianue var. 

 exoubitoroides at Madisonville, which upon dissection proved to be a male 'young of the 

 year.' It had attained its full plumage, however, the under parts being immaculate. 



