240 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



tit 



double line down the top of the head. Equally well 

 marked is the South American Sturnella defiUpfni, in 

 which the yellow is replaced by rose color. While at 

 the National Museum, Mr. Ridgway handed me a bird 

 which at first glance was unhesitatingly pronounced a 

 meadow lark, so exactly did its colors match those of 

 our bird. An inspection of the bill and feet, however, 

 showed that it was structurally entirely unlike Sturnella. 

 It was an African pipit (i\[(ic.roaijx croceus). Still more 

 remarkable is the fact that another African species 

 (Miicroiiyx ameliii') is colored like the South American 

 Sturnella.* 



Surely no one would be rash enough to attribute this 

 remarkable correspondence of colors and markings to 

 environmental influences! It would be better to say 

 that it was purely accidental or else confess complete 

 ignorance on the point. To attribute such instances as 

 this purely to environmental influences is to forget that, 

 as Dr. Schurmann has said, every modification in an 

 organism depends primarily upon the nature of the 

 organism itself, which reacts upon its environment. 

 Even if we granted, in this instance, that the environ- 

 mental conditions in America which produced the two 

 species of Sturnella were exactly reduplicated in the case 

 of the two African species of Macronyx, still the same 

 colors would not have been produced unless the two sets 

 of species were also precisely alike in their respective 

 constitutions — all of which is too great a tax upon our 

 credulity. It would be far more easy to believe that, as 

 Prof. Cope has suggested, a species might retain its 

 specific character and yet change its generic type. It 

 would then be merely necessary to assume that two 

 species were evolved and afterwards separated in their 

 distribution. A change in habits or environment might 



* Keoorded by Dr. L. Stejneger. Kiverside Natural History, iy, p. 488. 



