APPENDIX. 
235 
Entire head, throat, jugulum and breast quite uniform dark 
chocolate-brown, or soot-color, the feathers white at extreme 
bases ; whole abdomen, sides and lining of wings ferruginous- 
rufous, with shaft-streaks and variously formed spots and bars of 
dusky ; flank-plumes similar, but with the dusky markings pre- 
vailing; tibiae dusky, the longer plumes variegated with ferru- 
ginous ; tarsel feathers uniform dusky ; lower tail-coverts with 
exposed ends pale ferruginous, the concealed portion whitish. 
Whole under surface of primaries anterior to the emarginations, 
pure white, immaculate ; under surface of tail also uniform white. 
Wing, 18.80; tail, 10.50; culmen, 1.10; tarsus, 3.25; middle 
toe, 1.50. 
In general aspect, this specimen bears a close resemblance to 
the rufous-chested examples of melanistic Buteo borealis (/ 3 . 
calurus ,) the tail being the only very obvious difference so far as 
colors are concerned, though close inspection soon reveals other 
marked discrepancies, most important of which are the bright 
silver-gray of the outer surface and the immaculate snow-white 
of the under surface of the primaries. There is little resem- 
blance to the melanistic examples of A. lagopus (/ 3 . sancti- 
johannis, ) the general color being much too rufous, while the 
tail is conspicuously different. The great breadth of the gape and 
other peculiarities of structure only recognizable in A. ferru - 
gineus , also immediately refer this specimen to that species. 
Scops asio, e . maxwells, Ridgway, MSS. — Mrs. Maxwell’s 
collection contains a number of specimens of what is evidently a 
local form of the common North American Scops asio, represent- 
ing the opposite extreme from var. B. kennicotti ,* and quite as 
strongly marked as that form. These specimens and others that 
*1 have since seen, all agree in possessing with unusual uniformity 
the distinctive characters of the race, there being apparently 
much less of individual variation than in other forms of the 
species. This new race is a mountain bird, and possesses the 
distinctive features of alpine or boreal races in general, the size 
being larger and the colors very much paler than in the low-land 
races, even from much higher latitudes. In the colors, there 
is in all specimens an entire absence or but faint indication of 
any rufous tints, while the rufous phase of other forms is never 
* Naming the several marked geographical races of this species in the 
order of their date of publication, they may be arranged in the following 
sequence : a. asio ( Strix asio, Linn., S. N., 1758, 92,) B. kennicotti ( Scops 
kennicotti , Elliot, Pr. Phila. Acad. 1867, 69 ;) y . ploridanus {Scops asio , var . 
floridanus, Ridgway bull. Essex Inst. & Dec. 1873, 200;) y. enano (Scops 
asio, var. enano Lawr., Bull. Essex Inst., Dec. 1873, 200,) and e maxwellice, 
nobis. 
