THE CANADIAN SPOHTSMAN AND NATURALIST. 



213 



earlier part of the year. Newman gives Sep- 

 tember as its regular time of appearance. Yet 

 many females of this species, at their reg 

 time of appearance, are found destitute ol ova, 

 and the inevitable consequence is its rarity, 

 and possibly its dying out, at least in Eng- 

 land, unless (as intimated by Dr. Wallace) it 

 is kept up by fresh specimens flying over from 

 abroad. There is another cause of the rarity 

 of some species, but its mode of operation is 

 difficult to discover. Sometimes the introduc- 

 tion of an insect from another country, if it 

 become abundant in its new habitat, will affect 

 injuriously a native species, generally one 

 allied to the species introduced. It is the 

 general opinion of entomologists in the Prov- 

 ince of Quebec, that since the acclimatization 

 of Pieris rapze, the native Pieris oleracea has 

 become scarce. The newcomer seems in some 

 mysterious way to have usurped the place of 

 the other species, and driven it away from 

 places where formerly it was abundant. How 

 this has been accomplished, however, we 

 cannot tell. 



G. J. Bowles. 



THE HUDSONIAN CHICKADEE. 

 (Partis Hudsonicus .) 



The true home of the Hudson Bay Tit, as 

 this species is generally called, is in the more 

 northern parts of the continent, in Labrador 

 and the Hudson Bay region, with a range in 

 those latitudes from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; 

 though at the east it is met with much farther 

 south than in the middle or western sections. 

 It is a resident of N va Scotia and New 

 Brunswick, breeding in both Provinces, where, 

 though not abundant, it is far too common to 

 be called rare, though it is more frequently 

 met in winter than at other seasons. Accord- 

 ing to Mr. Everett Smith it is a comrrjon resi- 

 dent of the interior eastern ami northern por- 

 tion of Maine. Mr. Harry Merrill writes me 

 that he has not known it to occur near Ban- 

 gor, nor is it given iu Mr. Nathan C. Brown's 

 catalogue of Portland species, but there are 

 records of a few being taken in New Hamp- 

 shire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Mr. 

 LeMoine in Les Oiseaux du Canada mentions it 



Ias a rare species (plus rare en Canada'), and it 

 certainly is along the entire southern section 

 of the western Provinces, for Mr. Wintle does 

 not appear to have found it near Montreal, nor 

 is the name in the Sauuders-Morden list, nor 

 in Mr. Mcllwraith's old list of Hamilton 



species. Professor Macoun has not placed it 

 in his partial list of Belleville birds, nor did 



he find the bird in the Grand Valley of the 

 Assiniboine. It is not given in the catal 

 of the Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club, tin 

 in the copj before me the name has 

 penned in by one of the members in place of 

 rufescena, the latter being an obvious error as 

 tliat species was discovered by Town-end on 

 the Columbia River, and it has never been 

 taken north or east of that region. But this is 

 an error easily made unless the habitat of the 

 two species is considered, their plumage being 

 similar. 



Of the eighteen species of the Pariivr, found 

 in North America the most widely distributed 

 and the best known is the Black-capped (P. 

 atricapillus), the type species of the family. 

 This bird is found in all suitable localities 

 along the southern borders of the Dominion 

 (as well as- much further south) from the 

 Atlantic to Manitoba. In the latter Province 

 and across the Plains to the Rockies it is 

 replaced by septentrionalis, which Mr. Ridgway 

 says " may be looked upon as simply a long- 

 tailed western variety of the common species." 

 Beyond the Rockies this is again replaced by 

 still another variety, named by Baird ocidenta— 

 lis. Of the Hudson Bay Tit no variation in 

 the western specimens has as yet been record- 

 ed. But it is in form and coloration, only that 

 the spe"cies of the family exhibit any arked 

 differences, for no matter what na. they 

 bear, nor where they make their h.Ou es a you 

 will find them the same restless, merry, 

 sociable pygmies with all the familiar habits 

 of the Black-cap. Their songs also bear a 

 strong general resemblance — if the jingling 

 chant in which they carol their joy can be 

 called a song — for whether the singer be he of 

 the black tuft whose voice is heard on the 

 banks of the Rio Grande ; or Cctrolinenzis, who 

 helps to swell the chorus which comes up 

 from " the Land o* Dixie ;" or our own brown- 

 capped hero, whose tiny throstle dings a wel- 

 come to the sun as its light breaks upon the 

 hills of the far north, or be he whatever mem- 

 ber of this family he may. the theme of his 

 song, is much the same jaunty tcha-dce-dei-dce 

 as rings through our Canadian woods the 

 whole year long. The song of the Black- 

 capped and the Hudsor.ian are especially 

 similar, and their general appearance and 

 their manners in the field, particularly the 

 latter, are so alike as to make their exact 

 identification rather difficult ; vet even iu 



