I would really like to read online Alden Miller’s Speciation of the Avian genus of Junco. If anyone can send a link, I would appreciate it. According to some, Alden is the man about juncos:
http://www.birdfellow.com/journal/2...k_eyed_junco_x_white_throated_sparrow_hybrids .
http://hamiltonbiological.com/publi..._2005_Pink-sided_Gray-headed Juncos_WB 36.pdf .
Alden Miller did not mention J. cismontanus in Analysis of some hybrid populations of juncos. (1939)
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v041n05/p0211-p0214.pdf .
But he did put cismontanus as a subspecies in 1944 in The Distribution of the Birds of California.
I want to see Speciation of the Avian genus of Junco, because Dwight could not have been more clear that he was not using cismontanus as a name for a species or subspecies just as a convenient name for a hybrid combination, but he then went on to say ornithologists should not use cismontanus but the regular form of hybrids ie. J. h. oreganus x J. h. hyemalis. Art. 17.2 says that availability is not affected if it was known to be a hybrid taxon. But what about the intent of the original describer? Hybrid specimens are excluded from the Code but not hybrid taxa??? (Art. 1.3.1) Dwight did not intend to name a subspecies or a species. Here is the quote from Dwight.
Another important question which arises is how shall hybrids be named, if at all? As indicated when discussing hyemalis, the meeting of this species and oregonus gives us two types of hybrids and the meeting of mearnsi and oregonus gives a third. The third was described long ago as a new species, " Junco montanus" (Ridgway, 1898, Auk, XV, October, p. 321), but it mav be considered as either mearnsi darkened with the oregonus strain, or oregonus grayed with the mearnsi strain, as you please. In the same
way, east of the Rocky Mountains we have a hyemalis darkened or blackened by the oregonus strain that, for convenience, might be called " cismontanus," while chiefly west of them we find an oregonus with the gray back of hyemalis that might be called "transmontanus." If these names could be restricted to definite geographical areas there would be some grounds for admitting the existence of three races but, as a matter of fact, breeding birds bearing these characters turn up at many localities. Birds of the "montanus" type occur far north in the Mackenzie Valley and west to the Frazar Valley; those of the "cismontanus" type occasionally appear as far east as Quebec; and those of the "transmontanus" type reach the Cascade Mountains, in Washington and Oregon, especially at the higher elevations which seem to have a "graying" influence. It will be observed, however, that these three types of plumage are not merelv variations in color from mearnsi, hyemalis, or oregonus, but blends of their color characters. The birds are intermediates or intergrades between dissimilar extremes -extremes that are well deserving of specific rank, because their color characters are intrinsic or qualitative. Instead of naming the hybrids, it is probably simpler to follow the old-fashioned method of using an X to indicate them. If a specimen, is nearest to hyemalis we would write Junco hyemnalis .X oregonus, or if to oregonus, the name should be written Junco oregonus X hyemalis, etc. The brown of the back of oregonus is evidently sensitive to climatic influences, but it persists in some birds of the Rocky Mountains that breed with those of the "transmontanus" type. This fact alone provides a good reason, on the one hand, for considering couesi as a race of oregonus and, on the other, for considering "transmontanus" as the result of hybridization between hyemalis and oregonus. The line of cleavage between the species and their differentiation may, perhaps, stand in direct relation to the ice sheet of the last glacial period rather than to the Rocky Mountains themselves which, after all, form today a very weak barrier to the distribution of these hardy Sparrows.
http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/2246/1909/1/B038a09.pdf .
Swarth concluded cismontanus was J. h. connectens, Coues.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vWssAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false .
This is also the source of the English name of Cassiar Junco.
Looking at the Richmond card at Zoonomen for cismontanus Dwight never listed a type or type area (because he never wanted cismontanus to be a valid name) But Alden Miller did nominate a lectotype in Speciation a 1905 junco collected by Allan Brooks in British Columbia. If J. h. cismontanus is valid, Dwight cannot be the author the author must be Miller.