1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 425 REVIEW OF JAPANESE BIRDS.VIII.?THE NUTCRACKER (NUCIFBAGA CABYOCATACTES MACBOBHYN-CHOS).BY LEONHARD STEJNEGER.Having recently been asked by Victor Ritter von Tschusi-Schmid-koften to express au opiniou in regard to the races of Nucifraga caryo-catactes, I shall not attempt a full analysis of the whole question, butonly review the material in my hands, as it may throw some light onthe subject.Brehm was the first to clearly define the two races of Nutcrackers,which most ornithologists who have studied the question are now will-ing to admit. He was, however, unable to assign to them definite anddistinct habitats, and partly because the shape of the bill, which is theprincipal characteristic of the two races, is in itself subject to great in-dividual variation as well as to considerable changes on account of wearand tear, partly on account of the unreasonable prejudice of ornitholo-gists concerning the forms described by Brehm, the races or subspeciesin question were either misunderstood or entirely ignored for more thanhalf a century. When, in 1872, I examined aud measured a number ofNutcrackers in the museums of Bergen and Christiauia for the mono-graph of von Tschusi-Schmidhoffen,* I labored under the same impres-sion, viz, that because both thick-billed and slender-billed specimensoccurred in Norway there could not well be any racial difference. Butafter the elaborate monograph of Dr. Rudolf Blasius,t in which he mostconvincingly demonstrates that the resident bird of Europe is the thick-billed form, while the slender-billed individuals belong to the numerousflocks which, with short and irregular intervals, invade the westerncountries from the forest region of Siberia, there is no excuse for con-founding them any more.Before proceeding any further it will now be necessary to ascertainthe correct names of the two forms. While expressing my greatappreciation of Dr. R. Blasius's painstaking work, I can not but mostseverely condemn that he should think it necessary to reject the oldnames for the trifling reason that they are unsuitable, and substitutenew terras in direct violation of the law of priority recognized both bythe code of the American Ornithologists' Union and by the Stricklandiancode. The new names are imposed in order to avoid misunderstand-ings and confusions, but they have only made confusion more con- * Der Tauiieuheker {Nuchfraga caryocatactex). Dresden. L873, p. 4.tDer Wanderzng der Tauueuheher, etc., Ornis, n, 188(3, pp. 437-550, -f- pi. i-iii (alsoextr. paged 1-114). 426 REVIEW OF JAPANESE BIRDS.founded. It is safe to say that if Dr. Blasius and voii Tsclmsi hadstuck to the old terms they would by this time have become familiar toall ornithologists. As it is the new names should be suppressed assoon as possible, before more mischief is done.The following- is a condensed, but correct aud nearly complete synono-my of the two forms. It is plain that the resident form of Sweden, uponwhich Linnaeus bestowed the name Gorvus caryocatactes must stand asthe typical form. The Thick-billed Nutcracker, therefore, is entitled tothe name ? Nucifraga caryocatactes (LlN.).1758. ? Corvua caryocatactes Linn., Syst. Nat., 10 ed., i, p. 106.1816.?Caryocatactes maculatua Koch. Syst. Baier. Zool., I, p. 03.1816.?Nucifraga guttata Vieillot, Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. Nat., v. p. 354.1817. Caryocatactes nucifraga Nilsson, Orn. Svec, i. p. 90.1823.?Nucifraga brachyrhynehos Brehm, Lehrb. Eur. Yog., p. 104.1833. Nucifraga platyrhynchos Brehm, Isis. 1833, p. 970.1855.?Nucifraga alpestris Brehm, Vogelf., p. 66.I860. Nucifraga caryocatactes major Brehm, Journ. f. Orn., I860, p. 236. 1 Bti6. Nucifraga caryocatactes pachyrhynchtis R. Blasius, Ornis, n, p. 543 : extr. p. 107 ;pi. ii, figs. 3, 4; pi. iii.Should it be found necessary to use a trinominal in order to avoidmistakes it should be no other than Xucifraga caryocatactes brachyrhyn-ehos. On the other hand, the Slender-billed Nutcracker should standas ? Nucifraga caryocatactes macrorhynchos Brehm.1823. Xucifraf/a macrorhynchos Brehm, Lehrb. Eur. Yog., p. 103.1833. Nucifraga hamata Brehm, Isis, 1833, p. 970.1845. Nucifraga caryocatactes Selys-Longch., Bull. Ac. Brus.,xi (p. 293) (part; neeLinn.).1855.-?? Nucifraga arquata Brehm, Vogelf., p. 66.1866. Nucifraga caryocatactes macrorhynchos Brehm, Verz. Samml., p. 4.1886. Xucifraga caryocatactes leptorhynchusB,. Blasius. Oruis, ii, p. 543: estr. p. 107;pi. i ; pi. ii, tigs. 1,2.It appears that von Tschusi-Schmidhoffen, quite independently andabout the same time, came to the same conclusions as Dr. R. Blasius,*and both these ornithologists agree in dividing the Nutcracker into tworaces?one western, thick-billed, and another eastern, slender-billed.According to them N. caryocatactes brachyrhynehos " breeds in the north-ern temperate zone of the western portion of the palsearctic region, viz,in the forests of Lapland, Scandinavia, the Baltic provinces of Russia,East Prussia, the Harz, the Riesengebirge (Bohmerwald),the Schwarz-wald (Black Forest), the Carpathians (the mountains of Bosnia, Herze-govina, and Dalmatia), the whole extent of the Alps, aud the Pyren-ees." N. c. macrorhynchos, on the other hand, is stated to " breed inthe northern temperate zone of the eastern portion of the palsearctic *See " Verbr. uud Zug d. Tannenhehers," Verhaudl. k. k. zool.-bot. Ges. Y'ien, 1888,p. 488 ; extr. p. 82. 1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 427 region, viz, iu the forests of Asia, from Karatschatka and Japan westto the Ural Mountains and the governments of Perm and Vologda inEuropean Russia."Mr. Henry Seebohm, in a paper "On the Arctic Form of the Nut-cracker,"* has lately taken issue with Dr. R. Blasius in regard to thealleged distribution of the two forms, though agreeing with him in thegeneral result, viz, the distinctness of the forms and the migrant intonorthern Europe being the slender-billed Siberian race. He contendsthat " there is not an Eastern and a Western form, * * * but an arcticand a temperate form. * * * The Siberian form appears sometimesto winter in north China as well as in southern and western Europe,but the Japanese form appears to be a resident, and to be, to all intentsaud purposes, identical with the resident form of Europe. The whitespots, both on the upper and under parts aud on the end of the tail-feathers, are rather more developed in the Japanese birds than in theresident European ones, but not so much so as in examples from Siberia."My material is not sufficient to solve the puzzle entirely, but I thinkit is large enough to show that Mr. Seebohm's theory is not wellfounded. But before examining my material I must, from a generalstand-point, protest against the terms "arctic form" and "temperateform," used by Mr. Seebohm. In the first place, the Nutcracker is notan " arctic." bird. In Europe it occurs, more or less, stationary fromSpain (roughly, 42? north latitude f) to northern Norway (about 64?north latitude). Iu northwestern Russia the typical form hardly extendsso far north, while farther east the slender-billed race is not known tooccur north of 62? north latitude, aud the southern limit of its breedingrange in the Ural seems to be about 62? north latitude.^ Iu Asia thelatter has been found by Mr. Seebohm himself in the valley of the Yenisejas far north as 67?, though farther east it hardly exceeds the sixty- fourthdegree of latitude. The southern limit of its breeding range in westernAsia seems to be the Tian-Shan,? consequently about 40? north latitude,while in the extreme East slender-billed birds have been found iu sum-mer at least as far south as 38? north latitude. It will be seen that thedistribution of the Siberian form, on the whole, is not more arctic thanits western representative, if we regard the latitudes alone. But theadjectives arctic, for the former, and temperate, for the latter, are notbetter founded if, by such a nomenclature, we would indicate the rela-tive distribution of the two forms where their ranges meet, for there is *Ibis, 1888, pp. 23G-241.t Blasius, as quoted above, states that it breeds in the Pyrenees, but according toDr. Coinpanyo, in Dresser's Birds of Europe, iv, p. 45S, it is only a rare bird in theeastern Pyrenees, while Ar6valo y Baca (Aves de Espaiia, Madrid, 1887, p.expressly says that it occurs only accidentally in Spain. In Italy, according toGigioli (Avif. Ital., 1886, p. 13) aud Salvadori (Ucc. Ital., 1887, p. ISO) the Nutcrackeris stationary only in the Alps.tNazarow, Rech. Zool. Steppes Kirguiz, 1886, p. 31.ftZeverzow, Journ. f. Orn., 1875, p. 172. 428 REVIEW OF JAPANESE BIRDS. no evidence that in any part of the whole palsearctic region breedinglocalities of the slender-billed race are situated north of those ofthe thick-billed form on approximately the same degree of longitude,unless Mr. Seebohm be correct in referring the Japanese specimens tothe typical form.In fact, this identification by Mr. Seebohm seems to be the only foun-dation for his theory of an arctic and a temperate race, as opposed toBlasius's of a western and eastern. Upon the proper reference of theJapanese specimens, therefore, hinges the whole question.I have before me four examples from Japan, which I can comparewith four from Korea, one from Kamtschatka, and a number of bothforais from Europe. According both to Blasius and Seebohm, the slen-der-billed individuals from Western Europe are only immigrants fromSiberia ; they will consequently serve as well as specimens from thelatter country.Both Blasius and Seebohm lay considerable stress on the dimensionsof the bills as indicating the subspecific difference. To a certain extentthis is so, and an examination of the tables of measurements given belowwill therefore give some valuable hints as to the identity of the variousindividuals, but only if the specimens can be examined at -the sametime, for it is plain when inspecting a series of these birds that thepeculiar shape of the bills in the two birds is of more importance thanthe length and the height. In the typical form the upper mandible ismore swollen, the upper tomium more inflected, and the basal portionof the culmeu straighter and more parallel with the commissure, whilein the slender-billed form the upper tominm is hardly inflected at all,and the culmen tapers at once towards the tip from the frontal feather-ing. At the latter point the bills of both forms are nearly of the sameheight, and consequently Dr. Blasius's method of measuring the bills inthe middle is more expressive than that of Mr. Seebohm, who measuresthem at the angle of the gonys. It is plain that this difference is easierto appreciate in the specimens than to express in words or condense intoa satisfactory diagnosis, the more so since the bills in these birds aresubject to considerable individual variation in all directions. I willalso call attention to the fact that the bills of the resident birds ofEurope seem to vary to some extent locally, as both Blasius and vonTschusi-Schmidhoffen have noted a difference in the stoutness of thebill in specimens from Sweden and from the Alps.The other character to which Blasius has called special attention isthe width of the terminal white band of the tail-feathers. In the typ-ical form the average width is stated to be 18.3mm , while in the slender-billed subspecies it is given as averaging 27.1" 1 "1 on the outer pair. Thedifference in the width of the white baud is also admitted by Mr. See-bohm, and I find it corroborated by the material before me. i will re-mark, however, that this character is also subject to some individualvariation, but, so far as I can make out, there is no local variation 1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 429 within the two races. On the other hand, as in many other birds, thewhite ends to the tail-feathers are probably, on the whole, smaller inthe young birds than in the old ones.With these remarks in view, I shall now proceed to examine the ma-terial before me.The first one is U. S. National Museum No. 110015, from Petro-paulski, Kamtschatka, collected December 27, 1885. It is the eastern-most example I have seen, and is a very pronounced slender-billed bird,agreeing clusely with Blasius's fig. 2, pi. i. Its coloration exhibits themaximum amount of white, as might be expected.Next eomes four birds collected by Mr. P. L. Jouy, at Fnsan, south-ern extremity of Korea (latitude 35?), the southernmost locality, I think,iu which specimens of this species ever have been taken (U. S. NationalMuseum, Nos. 114097-114100). They are all alike and very character-istically slender-billed, belonging undoubtedly to macrorhynchos, bothon account of the shape and size of the bill and the width of the whitetail- band. From Norway I have four slender-billed birds, evidentlySiberian immigrants, collected near Bergen during the great invasionin 1887* (U. S. National Museum, Nos. 113218-113222), which are inevery particular identical with the Korean examples. It would be utterly impossible to tell these birds apart were the labels removed, andthe uniformity of these eight specimens of so variable a species, andfrom so distant localities, is truly astonishing.Finally, I have four specimens from Japan, collected by Mr. Jouy,but as two of them are young birds which have not yet fully assumedthe adult plumage, they may safely be left out of the comparison. Theremaining two are U. S National Museum, No. 88701, $ , Fuji, July 2,1882, a fully adult bird, just molted into a fresh plumage, possibly themother of the two young birds referred to, which were shot in the samelocality on the same day, and the other, No. 91392, $ , Tate-Yama, De-cember 17, 1882. The latter is unquestionably a typically slender-billedbird, very much like the one described from Kamtschatka, with a slightlylonger bill, the length of which exactly equals the average of the eightspecimens from Korea and Norway referred to above, while the amountof white on the tail almost reaches the maximum. The bill is just a triflehigher than that of the other slender-billed specimens (though not reach-ing the maximum height of specimens measured by Blasius, e. g., his * I have seen only few notices of the 1867 migration. According to J. Collin, in his" Biurag til Kundskaben oin Dantuarks Fuglefauna," the Nutcracker has never beforeoccurred, in such numbers in Denmark. Iu Norway the immigration was remarkableboth on account of the number of birds aud the extent of country covered, specimenshaving been taken even north of Tromsce. Near Bergen about one hundred individ-uals were killed during September, aud Mr. V. Storiu states that the bird appearedin the vicinity of Troudhjem in vast numbers about the first of that mouth. Numerousspecimens were received from Rceraas, Guldal, (Erkedal, Rissen, and more northernlocalities. (K. Norske Vid. Selsk. Skr. 18S6-'67, Trondhj., 1888, p. 52; Naturen, xn,1888, p. 224.) 430 REVIEW OF JAPANESE BIRDS.Nos. 30, 31), but its shape is normal, and differs in that respect fromthe resident Scandinavian birds as much as any one in the series. ThePuji-Tama bird, found breeding near the extreme southern range of thespecies, differs only in having the bill shorter than any other specimenin the series. The shape, however, is that of 2V. macrorhynchos, and thewhite on the tail is almost up to the average, as established by Blasius,or 3""" wider than the maximum of any specimen by him referred to thetypical thick-billed form. That the shortness of the bill is no argumentagainst referring this Japanese specimen to the Siberian form is veryplain, from the fact that it is nearly identical with a Yenisej specimencollected by Mr. Seebohm himself (No. 176 of his collection, fide Blasius,Ornis, 1886, p. 172, extra p. 36, No. 8).*My material, therefore, contradicts Mr. Seebohm's suggestion thatthe resident bird of Japan is, "to all intents and purposes, identical withthe resident form of Europe." On the contrary, it is evident to me thatit is, to all intents and purposes, identical with the Siberian, or the slen-der-billed form N. c. macrorhynchos.The very meager details in regard to his specimens, which Mr. See-bohm furnishes in his article, do not support his own conclusion that "the white spots * * * on the ends of the tail-feathers are * * *not so much [developed] as in examples from Siberia;" for he himselfgives the white on tail as varying between 0.9 and 1.1 inch in the Jap-anese birds, against a variation of from 0.8 to 1.25 inch in Siberian andChinese specimens and presumed European migrants, consequentlynearly coinciding with the limits established for the latter.1 am, therefore, forced to conclude that Dr. B. Blasius and Y. vonTschusi-Schmidhoffen are right in distinguishing between an easternand a western race, and that Mr. Seebohm is wrong in assuming theexistence of an arctic and a temperate form of the Nutcracker.Before closing 1 would say, however, that I will not deny the possi-bility of a large series of Japanese birds showing a somewhat shorterbill, on the average, than continental Asiatic specimens; but I will vent-ure to say that the difference in size and shape will not be so great asit is between resident birds from Scandinavia and southern Europe,and 1 do not think that the differences will ever prove tangible or con-stant enough to allow a further subdivision of this species. Blasius andvon Tschusi have made it pretty plain that the differences in size andshape of bill in the two subspecies recognized are due to the differencein the food, the nut of the Siberian form of Pinus cembra having a thin-ner shell than the typical form growing in the mountains of centralEurope. The difference between resident Scandinavian and SouthEuropean specimens is easily explained from a similar reason, as Pinus ' In the table alluded to the length of the bill is given as 30mm . This I take to hea misprint or a slip of the pen for 40mni , as the length from nostril to tip of bill is saidto be 34.2mm , exactly as in the Japanese specimen before me, the exposed culmen ofwhich is 40mm . 1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 431cembra does not occur wild in Scandinavia, where the Nutcrackers arecompelled to live on seeds or nuts harder and more difficult to open.Pinus cembra is said to occur in the highest mountains of Hondo, Japanbut apparently in limited number. It is therefore doubtful whether theNutcracker to any great extent feeds on this fruit. I am also unable tosay whether the Japanese P. cembra belongs to a thin-shelled varietyor to a thick-shelled, as I cannot find it stated whether the form oc-curring in Japan is P. cembra sibirica or not. It may be useful toremark, that Professor Schiibeler (Die Pflanzenwelt Norwegens, Chris-tiania, 1875, p. 15-1) characterizes the seeds of the two forms (or species :')as follows : P. sibirica having the seed sooty brown in color, and ratherattenuated in shape at one end, one hundred seeds weighing 24.75grams, while those of P. cembra typica are light brown, oval or nearlyglobular, one hundred seeds weighing 39.10 grams. There are con-sequently three questions for the resident field ornithologists of Japanto solve: (1) Are the bills of the Nutcrackers residing in Japan normallyand on the average shorter than the bills of the birds residing on theAsiatic main-land? (2) What kind of seed or nut forms the principalfood of the Nutcracker in Japan? (3) Are the seeds of Plnus cembrain Japan incased in a harder shell than those from Siberia ?Measurements (in millimeters). I. NUCIFRAGA MACRORHYNCHOS.(a) Specimensfrom Japan. 6 33s 432 REVIEW OF JAPANESE BIRDS. II. STUCIFRAGA. CARYOCATACTES. 985731111069673 Stqjneger,65.Collett ...Von Miil-ler. $ a