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 Jan., 9ox I THE CONDOR x3 O yellow is present or even pre- dominant over the red, must come to the notice .of every field or- nithologist of the west; in fact we may look for some yellow feathers in about one-half the males of this group. oxia, ?inico/a and probably other genera have a yellow phase of regular occur- rence in the immature plumage. It is this dichromatism which led me to make a few rmnarks before the Club--not with the intention of reporting anything new but with the hope that some mem- bers might take an interest in what has interested me. The following notes were made on specimens of Carpodaci in my collection and treat of the occurrence of yellow among the North American species. am unfortunate in having no repre- sentatives of Mexican forms but these would doubtless show the same varia- tions in plumage color. Yellow feathers are rare in Carpoda- cus iburpttreus calzfornicus and I have never seen them in C. cassini. Of the former race Mr. T. E. Slevin has two males in which a few yellow feathers occur on the breast. They were taken at Fairfax, California, in December. In the subgenus Burfica, including as it does the so-called house finches, the yellow phase is common and these plumages will now be described for each race examined. Among the finches from the San Ben- ito Islands (C. mqgreori ), I have never seen two alike. The colors range from bright crimson through orange into lemon yellow with all manner of varia- tions resulting from combinations of these colors and tieir shades or tints. It is impossible to take any example and say it is the typical coloration. The finch of Guadalupe Island (C. avzplts) shows more stability in its col- , ration but even here we often find Dichromatism in the enus Carpodacus RICHARD C. MCGREGOR. [Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club,I CCASIONAL finches, in which birds varying from the normal. Ofsev- enteen males before me, nine, or over one-half, are nore or less yellow. In two of these the rump, head, and breast are dear lemon yellow, in a third the feathers are about equally red and yel- low, of a pale washed-out look. The remaining six have a few yellow feath- ers irregnlarly mixed with the crimson. The proportion of yellow birds which really occurs in probably less than the above figures would indicate as this series was selected, somewhat, with a view to getting the abnormal examples. Among mainland birds (Cm. obsctr- us), great deviation from the crimson type is rarer, though even here it is surprising how many shades of color occur. In aseriesof over fifty males before me including skins from Col- orado, nearly the whole length of Cali- fornia, and four from northern Lower California there are thirty-three in which more or less yellow occurs. How- ever, four only are strikingly different from the normal, three being yellow with no red and one almost orange with very few yellow feathers. Twenty- nine possess from one or two to a dozen lemon colored feathers mixed among the red. Among the red examples, too, there is great variation. Many are a deep rose pink (young of the year?.), others are crimson or near vermilion. Birds taken just before or during breed- ing season have an indescribable lustre which is only ascribable to intensifica- tion or addition of pigment. Of six examples from Coronado and San Clemente Islands (C. clementis), one from each island has a few yellow feathers; another from Coronado is al- most brick red. Even in C. r,vberrimus frcnx San Jose del Cabo, we find cases of reversion, for although this form is 'very red' as its name indicates, there are occasional specimens with yellow feathers. I have