FBINGILLID^: FINCHES, BUNTINGS, SPABBOWS, ETC. 



369 



79. MELOSPI'ZA. (Gr. /icXos, rmlos, song, melody, and o-jrifa, spisa, name of some Finch in Aris- 

 totle). Song Sparrows. Bill moderate, conic, without special turgidlty or compression, out- 

 lines of culmen, commissure, gonys and sides nearly or about straight. Wings short and much 

 rounded, folding little heyond base of tail ; 1st primary quite short ; point of wing formed by 3d, 

 4th, and 5th, supported closely by 2d and 6th ; inner secondaries not elongated. Tail long, 

 about equalling or rather exceeding the wings, much rounded, with firm feathers broad to their 

 rounded ends. Feet moderately stout ; tarsus scarcely or not longer than middle toe and claw ; 

 lateral toes slightly unequal, outer the longer, its claw scarcely or not reaching base of middle 

 claw. Embracing a large number of middle-sized and large sparrows, without a trace of yellow 

 anywhere, and of brownish-yeUow only in M. lincolni; upper parts, including crown, thicldy 

 streaked ; under parts white or ashy, thickly streaked across breast and along sides (excepting 

 adult M. palustris). No bright color anywhere, and no colors in masses. The type of the genus 

 is the familiar and beloved song sparrow, — a 

 bird of constant characters in the East, but which 

 in the West is split into numerous geographical 

 races, some of them looking so different from 

 typical fasdata that they have been considered 

 as distinct species, and even placed in other gen- 

 era. This differentiation affects not only the 

 color, but the size, relative proportion of parts, 

 and particularly the shape of the bill; and it is 

 sometimes so great, as in case of M. cinerea, that 

 less dissimilar-looking Jjirds are commonly as- 

 signed to different genera. Nevertheless, the 

 gradation is complete, and effected by impercep- 

 tible degrees. Some Northwestern forms of 

 great size and dark colors are easily discrimi- 

 nated, but there are U. S. birds from Atlantic to 

 Pacific which are not readily told apart. The 

 student should not be discouraged if a subject 

 which has tried the chiefs perplexes him ; nor must he expect to find drawn on paper hard and 

 fast lines which do not exist in nature. The curt antithetical expressions used in constructing 

 the analysis of species and varieties necessarily exaggerate the case, and are only true as indi- 

 cating the typical style of each ; plenty of specimens lie " between the lines'' as written. In 

 going over a large series of Western song sparrows — • specimens picked to illustrate types of 

 style rather than connecting links, it still seems to me that distinctions have been somewhat 

 forced ; and that, also, different degrees of variation are thrown out of proper perspective by 

 reducing all the forms to the same varietal plane. Thus, the differences between cinerea 

 and all the rest, or between rufina and fasdata, are much greater than between rufina and 

 guttata for instance, or between fallax and fasdata. In any outline of the genus the curves and 

 angles indicated by Baird in 1858 are as far as they go nicer qualifications than the dead-level 

 varieties later in vogue. The several degrees of likeness and unlikeness may be thro\vn 

 into true relief better by some such expressions as the following than by formal antithetical 

 phrases: — 1. The common eastern bird slightly modified in the arid interior into the duller 

 colored 2. fallax. This, in the Pacific water shed, more decidedly modified by deeper 

 coloration, — broader black streaks in 3. heermamni, with its diminutive local race 4. sarrmeUs, 

 and more ruddy shades in 5. guttata northward increasing in intensity, with increased size, 

 in 6. rujma. Then the remarkable 7. d/nerea, insulated much further apart than any of 

 the others. A former American school would probably have made four "good species." 

 1. fasdata; 2. samuelis; 3. rufina; 4. dnerea. The present British school might perhaps 



24 







Fig. 232. — Liiiculii'8 

 (Sbeppard del. Nichols eo.) 



Suijg-Sparrow reduced. 



