BIRDS OP NOETH AND MIDDLE AMERICA. 33 



Toung male and female {first year). — Similar to the immature 

 female (in second year) but more uniform in color, the forehead less 

 distinctly or extensively hoary, feathers of back, scapulars, and rump 

 without paler margins, and with the faint gloss greenish blue rather 

 than violet-blue, the throat and chest slightly paler and more uniform, 

 the sooty -gray centers to the feathers being less distinct. 



Temperate North America, except Pacific coast district; breeding 

 north to Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, northwestern Ontario, 

 (Bracebridge, etc.), Manitoba (Pembina River, Turtle Mountain, Big 

 Plain, Portage la Prairie, Lake Manitoba, Saskatchewan, etc.), Mon- 

 tana, and Idaho; breeding southward to southern Florida, southern 

 Texas, and plateau of Mexico (States of Vera Cruz, Guanajuato, 

 Jalisco, etc. , and Territory of Tepic) ; in winter, from southern Florida 

 and Mexico to Venezuela and Brazil. Accidental in Bermudas and in 

 British Islands. 



\_Hirundo\ subis LiNNiEDS, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, i, 1758, 192 (Hudson Bay; based on 

 Hirundo cserulea canadensis Edwards, Nat. Hist. Birds, pi. 120). — Gmelin, 

 Syst. Nat., i, 1788, 1021. 



Hirundo subis Maynard, Birds Florida, 1874, 71. 



might show sufficient variation to justify the recognition of two or more geographic 

 subspecies. I am especially sorry that the material before me, including practically 

 all the specimens examined by Dr. Mearns, does not allow me to adopt the recently 

 described subspecies Progne subis floridanus Mearns. If all the Florida specimens 

 were like Dr. Mearns's type and another specimen (from the St. Johns Eiver) men- 

 tioned by him the Florida birds would constitute an excellent subspecies; but 

 unfortunately in a series of twenty adult females from Florida, the majority undoubt- 

 edly being breeding birds, only four answer to his diagnosis, the remaining sixteen 

 being in no respect, that I can discover, different from more northern specimens. 

 What these four dark Florida birds really represent I do not know, but unless they 

 alone of the series examined represent a resident Florida race (a view which their 

 dates of capture and those of other Florida specimens does not favor) , they must 

 represent merely individual variation. It is true there are no similar specimens in 

 the series examined from other parts of the United States; but then this series, so far 

 as the Atlantic' region is concerned, is very small (only half as large as that from 

 Florida), and I therefore suspect these dark-colored examples may yet be found 

 outside of Florida. 



One of three breeding females from Guanajuato, central Mexico, is similar to the 

 dark Florida specimens in the almost entirely sooty gray under parts, the other two 

 having the normal amount of white below. These specimens are in bad condition, 

 being soiled with fatty exudation of the skin, and therefore I am unable to place 

 them satisfactbrily, but I think they should be referred to P. subis subis. 



Arizona specimens and those from western Texas are intermediate between true 

 P. s. mbis and P. s. hesperia, but on the whole rather near the former, to which I at 

 present refer them. 



Since the above was written I have examined two adult females from Sing Sing, 

 New York, in the collection of Dr. A. K. Fisher, that are so closely similar in col- 

 eration to the type of P. s. floridanus, and, with a single exception, so much darker 

 than any others of Dr. Mearns's Florida series, that there is no longer the least doubt 

 in my mind as to the propriety of not recognizing a Florida form of the species. 



10384— VOL 3—03 3 



