?'?Iar., 1918 83 THE SUBSPECIES OF THE OREGON JAY By H. S. SWARTH (Contribution from the Museum of Ver(ebrate Zoology of tbe University of California) N A RECENT paper on the races of Perisoreus obsc?rus ?, the author, Dr. Harry C. Oberholser, arrives st certain conclusions, interesting in themselves but resulting in a systematic treatment of the species which it seems to the present writer contains a large element of error. Briefly, the important features of the paper are the description of a new subspecies, Perisoreus obsc?rus rath- buni, from the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound regions, the restriction of P.o. obscurus to the coast region between central Washington and Humboldt Bay, California, and the inclusion of Vancouver Island in the range of P.o. griseus. In plotting a map of the general range of Perisoreus obscurus (roughly, as needs be, considering the few definite stations from which the species has been recorded) it is interesting to note the positions of the type localities of the three described subspecies, obscurus from Shoalwater Bay, Pacific County, Washing- ton, griseus from Keechelus Lake, Kittitas County, Washington, and rathbuni from Lake Crescent, Clallam County, Washington. These three stations are about equidistant apart, a little over a hundred miles distant each from each, forming a small triangle about at the center of the range of the species. As an unfortunate result it follows that however the species obscurus may be divided into distinguishable races the individuals selected as types have been taken at points where intergradation of characters might be expected to occur, and not from regions where extremes of differentiation are found. Perisoreus obscurus rathbuni is described as differing from P.o. obscurus in darker coloration and somewhat greater size. As regards color it may be ob- served that there are several bird races of the northwest coast that appear to at- tain to the darkest extremes of shades on the mainland of the Puget Sound re- gion. In the Bewick Wren (Thryomanes bewicki) for example, specimens from this section are appreciably darker than those from Vancouver Island to the northward or from the mainland to the southward. (See Swarth, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 4th ser., vol. 6, 1916, p. 65.) In the Spotted Towhee (Pipilo macula- tus), although there is no extensive series at hand from the mainland about Puget Sound, still, an adult male from Seattle 'is darker colored than any Van- couver Island bird. Then, as to the size differences shown by the' Oregon Jays of the several regions, it will be noted that P.o. rathbuni is somewhat larger than P.o. obscurus, to the southward. Typical obscurus, again, is larger than birds still farther to the southward, as'shown by a large series from the Hum- boldt Bay region, California, here available. Thus it is seen that from the southern extreme of the species at Humboldt Bay, northward to Puget Sound, there is gradual increase in size and intensified darkness of color. It is just such a case as that concerning the Wren-tit, pre- sented and commented upon with such clearness some years ago by Osgood, in Tn? CONDOR (vol. 3, 1901, p. 50). The diagrams illustrating the points made in that paper might well be studied in connection with the questions involved in the
- Description of a new subsl?ecies of Perisoreus obscurus. By Harry C. Oberholser.
P?oc. Biol. Soc. Wash., vol. 30, Dec. 1, 1917, pp. 185-188.
