146 
ALLEN’S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 
genus Parus the wing is longer than the tail. It is a Palrearctic 
as 1 “ uf of \ he v i,,,aiayan genus 
'Jigu/taius seems to us to be a great mistake, as from the 
measurements given by I)r. Gadow himself in the British 
Museum Catalogue of Birds,” the wing and tail are evidently 
equal in length in sEgithaUscus. The range of the genus 
■digit ha his may, therefore, be said to extend over Europe^ and 
eastwards through Siberia to the Pacific and to the Japanese 
slands It is a very curious fact, often remarked upon by ornitho 
gists, that in Japan, so far away from Great Britain ^ there re 
occur certain striking elements of the British Avi-fat "a Many 
species are precisely the same, others are closely allied and rl 
foimTh T Ve ‘ ih “ s . our E »glish Siskin and Brambling are 
ound in Japan, while our Greenfinch is replaced by a closely 
bird'oMhe Hawfi, ; ch ! s scarcely distinguishable from the 
tailed T t th J e a T PaneSe 1SlandS ’ and in the case of the Long 
fke fts BriShlrT S P ecle \^f tnvirgatus, is more 
! fu VaganS -' than tlle white-headed form, 
caudatus, which is the species of the intervening area from 
Scandinavia to Eastern Siberia, though Mr. Seebohm reco“ 
nises a Siberian form, sE, macrurtis » 0 
vagans the British species, was at first supposed to be 
confined to Great Britain, but it certainly extends over France 
and into North ern Italy, to judge by the specimens in the 
British Museum but little really is known of its distribution 
In the Rhine 1 rovmces of Germany, Count von Berlepsch 
has found a form which he pronounces to be intermediate 
between /E. vagans and sE. caudatus of Northern Europe He 
has very kindly sent several specimens to the Museum and 
we must say that we are not yet convinced of the intemrada 
Uon of the two races. The young of both are indistinguishable 
and have a black band on each side of the crown, "in adult’ 
/E. caudatus this entirely disappears, and the head becomes 
snow-white while in vagans the black band becomes per- 
•nanent in the adults and is one of the features of the spedes 
I he specimens which are considered to be intermediate be- 
tween the two forms have a white head with more or less 
remains of a lateral stripe on the crown. This may very well 
be the remains of the immature plumage, and does not neces- 
sanly afford evidence of interbreeding or even of the imperfect 
