312 BIRDS—LANIIDAs. 
cianus and excubitoroides look very different, but they are observed to melt into eacn other 
when many specimens are compared, so that no specific character can be assigned,’ and 
if the doctor had substituted the term varietal for specific, he would have hit equally 
near the trath. The fact is. there is so little difference between Eastern examples of 
excubitoreides and the Seuthern bird that they have often been confounded, and it is 
practically almost impossible te distinguish them. My own opinion is that the locality 
whence the specimen came furnishes the most valuable clew to its identity. In @ 
young male taken by Mr. Dayan at Lyon’s Falls, Lewis county, New York, September 
4, 1877, the light ash of the upper parts contrasts strongly with the ‘dark plumbeous- 
ash’ of typical Southern examples of ludovicianus in the cabinet of Mr. George N. Law- 
rence, to whose kindness I am indebted for the comparison, and for many other favors. 
In other respects the bird more closely approaches the Southern form. The Western 
bird breeds abundantly in Ohio (Wheaton) and was first observed in Canada West (near 
Hamilton) by Mr. McIlwraith about the year 1360, sinee which date it has bred regularly 
in that locality. Allen, in 1869, published in the ‘American Naturalist’ (p. 579) the first 
record of its breeding in New York State (near Bufialo), and Rathbun gives it as 
breeding at Auburn, in the central portion of the State. Fred. J. Davis, Hsq., 
informs me that he has taken several of its nests in the vicinity of Utica, and 
the fact of its breeding in Lewis county completes its range to the Adirondacks. Be- 
yond this barrier it is not, to my Knowledge, found, excepting as a rare straggler; and 
most of the New England specimens have commonly been regarded as aceidental visitors 
from the South. Mr. Purdie, however, in this Bulletin (Vol. li, Ne. 1, page 2t, 1877), 
records the capture of a ‘typical’ specimen of var. exeubitoroiges at Cranston, R. J., Sep- 
tember 2, 1873, by Fred. T. Jeneks. This is, so far as | am aware, the only recognized 
instance of the capture of the Western form in New England. As a pretty conelusive 
proof that our New York bird has been derived from the Western (excubitoroides) “‘type,” 
we have the fact of the continuity of its range eastward from the Mississippi to the 
Adirondacks (through Ohio to Buffalo, Auburo, Utica, and Lewis county, New York) ; 
while, on the other hand, its entire absence from those portions of the State where the 
Carolinian Fauna is most marked (notably along the Hudson River, where such charac- 
teristic birds as fcleria virens, Mytodioctes mitratus, Helmitherus vermivorus, and Siurus 
motaciila breed in abundance) is sufficient evidence that it is not the Southern bird. 
That it does not o¢cur in the region above specified is pretty clearly shown by the fact 
that neither Edgar A. Mearns (of Highland Falls, near West Point) nor Kugene P. Bick- 
nell (of Riverdale), two of our most enterprising young collectors, have ever met with 
even a single straggler of the genus, other than C. borealis, although they have both 
made the birds of the Hudson River Valley a speeial study.” 
Thus it appears that this variety has extended its range eastward from 
the Mississippi Valley mainly along the basin of the Great Lakes, 
though a comparison of the citations of both varieties of recent dates 
shows that not even the locality now furnishes a clew to assist in identi- 
fication. Mr. Langdon, in Bull. Nutt. Club, iv, 1879, 120, gives the fol- 
lowing note on this variety in Southwestern Ohio: 
‘‘On the 22d of August, 1878, I took a well-marked example of Coliurio ludovicianus var. 
excubitoroides at Madisonville, which upon dissection proved to be a male ‘young of the 
year.” It had attained its full plumage, however, the under parts being immaculate, 
