328 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Yol.LVI 



marks clearly indicates that this is not true of the hy- 

 brids between all species of finches, for oil the next page 

 (275) he makes the following statement concerning the 

 "much more common" greenfinch-goldfinch hybrid: 



It is not a very pretty bird, . . . partaking to a considerable extent 

 of its [the greenfinch's] dull colour, though occasionally a more bril- 

 liant example than usual, having a good deal of the Goldfinch char- 

 acter about it, appears on the stage. 



Davenport's (1908) conclusion therefore does not seem 

 to be very well founded. 



Results published by Galloway (1909) since the ap- 

 pearance of Davenport's (1908) paper seem to throw 

 some light on this question. As already stated, this 

 author (Galloway) obtained 172 dark (self-colored) to 

 168 variegated (mottled) offspring from his canary- 

 European goldfinch {Carduelis carduelis) crosses. How- 

 ever, when he used the siskin {Carduelis spinus), a 

 closely related but darker species, he obtained nearly 

 three times as many (36 to 13) self-colored as mottled 

 individuals, that is, almost a 3 to 1, instead of a 1 to 1 

 ratio. These results, supported by those set forth in 

 this paper, suggest that the frequency of mottling in 

 canary-finch hybrids is not solely due to the yellow 

 canary," but probably also depends on the coloration of 

 the vnld finch. 



LITERATUKE CITED 



Bailey, P. M. 



1902. Handbook of Birds of the Western United States. The Eiver- 



Keichen. Vol. 4. Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, Leipzi 

 The ^Illustrated Book of Canaries and Cage-birds. 



lar problem exists in regard to the mottled seed-coat 

 )igmented-white bean crosses. Shull (1907) suggested 

 md not the pigmented bean to which the mottling is di 



