a) Metallicity distribution for the microlensed dwarf sample (white dashed line shows the distribution of the 26 microlensed dwarf stars from Bensby et al. 2011); b) 166 red giant stars in Baade’s window from Hill et al. (2011); c) 220 red clump stars in Baade’s window from Hill et al. (2011); d) 1813 red giant stars with from the ARGOS survey fields at (l,b) = (0, −5),   (5, −5),   (−5, −5) from Ness et al. (submitted). e) 363 red giants at (l,b) = (0, −10) from Uttenthaler et al. (2012); The curved lines in a)–d) represent generalised histograms. Dotted vertical lines mark the peaks claimed by Ness et al. (submitted) in d).