98 University of California Publications in Zoology [Vou.30

Next to be considered is the Alaska race. The notable feature of
this bird is its bright ruddy tone of coloration, a character that is
evident in both sexes and in all stages of the summer plumages. As
compared with rupestris, the general tone of color throughout is
brighter and more reddish, and there is notable restriction of the dark
areas on individual feathers.

The extreme manifestation of this race is reached on the north-
western and northern coast of Alaska, it occupies practically the whole
of the Alaskan mainland, and it extends eastward of Alaska along the
Arctic coast for some distance. In the latter region the duller color
of specimens from Baillie Island, Coronation Gulf, and Bathurst Inlet,
is to be interpreted, 1o my mind, as indicative of intergradation with
rupestris.

Southeastward there is intergradation again with rupestris as
occurring in British Columbia, about at the Alaska-Yukon boundary
line. A series of seventeen skins from the vicinity of Eagle (U.S. Biol.
Surv. coll.), in the upper Yukon region, demonstrates such inter-
gradation satisfactorily. Certain selected skins from this series and
from the British Columbia aggregation are hardly to be distinguished,
and none of the Eagle specimens shows the extreme of ruddiness that
is seen in Alaskan birds from more northern points. The Eagle series
as a whole, however, certainly belongs with the northern Alaska sub-
species rather than with rupestris. On the southern coast there is
apparent intergradation with dizoni, as shown by skins from Kodiak
Island, Seward, and Prince William Sound.

The matter of a name for the Alaskan bird requires careful con-
sideration. The race assuredly is distinct from rupestris of the Hudson
Bay region, and as such is deserving of nomenclatural recognition.
To have been able to fix a type locality somewhere in northern Alaska
would have been desirable, for it is there that this form is developed
in its extreme manifestation, but as it happens, the boundaries of the
subspecies, as indicated by the specimens at hand, include a region
from which a form of rock ptarmigan has already been named, I refer
to Lagopus rupestris kelloggae Grinnell (1910, p. 383), type locality,
Montague Island, Prince William Sound. It is true that in describing
that subspecies Grinnell made detailed comparison with the same series
of birds from Eagle to which I have already referred, and which I
consider as belonging to the same race; and he based his belief in the
distinctness of kelloggae partly upon the differences he could discern
between birds from Prince William Sound and those from Eagle.