September, 19o2. [ THE CONDOR 11x mal matter 11.6%; one stomach collect- ed March x6, i9o2 , vegetable and ani- mal matter each 5o%; one stomach collected April 27, i9o2, vegetable matter 6% and animal matter 94.?/oo. The food of the June specimens consisted of sm .ll oats, Erodium, grass seeds and Hymenoptera. Those taken in Sep- tember had a more varied bill of fare, consisting of crickets, carabid beetles, ants, grasshoppers, Hymenoptera and one olive scale, chickweed, Polygonurn, Amaranthus, Erodium and oats. Grass- hoppers in the animal and wild oats in the vegetable food seem to largely pre- dominate. One March stomach con- tained Hymenoptera and Hemiptera and unidentified seeds, while the April specimen showed Chrysomelid and Lampyricl beetles, Jassids, Arachnids, oats and Erodium. I believe the rufous-crowned sparrow to be resident in this locality, since I have collected them in September, No- vember and March, and the abundance of food and mild winters would seem to suggest no necessity for migration. Despite the natural secretiveness of the species in breeding season I do not con- sider it wary at other seasons and its acquaintance may be easily cultivated. To my fancy the very solitude which this bird seeks makes it the more inter- esting to the ornithologist and 'I shall look forward to further investigation of its sage brush home with renewed interest. The Redwood Belt of Nortl?western California. ?v WXL?a ?c. Fxsrma. HE northwest coast district of the United States is possessed of a peculiar interest ornithologically. It is a region of heavy rainfall and of dark forests, and not a few pale interior birds are here presented by more deeply colored races. For the student of geographical distribution it has also many attractions because such unusual conditions prevail. Combined with a long summer of comparative- ly low temperature for the latitude are frequent fogs and not a few rains. The proximity to the ocean has much to do with the equable climate, but the summer fogs and light rains more than anything perhaps are responsible for the tempera- ture, since they greatly reduce the number of sunny days, and thus pull down very decidedly the sum total of heat for the season of reproduction To the pe- culiar summer fogs and rain are also due the heavy forests and rank vegetation, and to both the fogs and forests the dark races of birds. Without thinking one is prone to connect the intensity of coloring in the birds of this particular region directly with the heavy rainfall, as if the moisture itself in some manner acted to produce these deeper tints. In the same way the lack of rain in desert regions is sometimes invoked to explain the faded coloration of many of the desert-loving species. But, omitting the effect of the different rates of abrasion in humid and dry climate, the intersity of color itself seems more directly due to the proportion of cloudy days, irrespective of moisture, during the season of reproduction. With cloudy days is ranked also the semi-daylight of dark forests. Many of the humid belt birds spend their winters in the drier inter- ior when the rainfall is heaviest in their breeding areas. They would therefore lose in a large degree any 'benefit' that the rain itself might confer, granting it pos- sessed any sovereign influence. We must remember that the total rainfall of the Transition of the central Sierra Nevada exceeds that of Eureka in the so-called humid belt. But the rainstorms of the Sierra are very heavy, of short duration,
