NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 107 



groups, distinguished by the color of the patch on the breast. 

 One lot has this patch clear, rather light, cinnamon-rufous; the 

 other has it dark grayish-brown, the same color as the upper parts. 

 Upon examining the labels, the first series is found to be com- 

 posed entirely of males, while those of the second are all females. 



In a series of nine normally-colored adult males, all but two 

 have the rufous breast-patch abruptly defined posteriorly, against 

 the white of the posterior lower parts, the outline being semicir- 

 cular and pretty firm. The remainder of the lower surface is 

 white, with little, if any, general ochraceous tinge ; the inside of 

 the tibias is quite strongly washed with this color. One specimen 

 (No. 161 Mus. R. R., Wahsatch Mountains, Utah, June 27) is 

 almost immaculate beneath, posterior to the clear cinnamon-rufous 

 breast patch, there being only a very few scattered and minute 

 hastate specks of rust on the abdomen. The remaining five are 

 more or less speckled or barred underneath, the amount of these 

 markings varying with the individual the lightest-colored being 

 almost as continuously white as that just described, the darkest 

 having the abdomen thickly, though rather faintly, barred. Two 

 of the specimens have the bars on the upper portion of the abdo- 

 men (just below the rufous pectoral area) darker rusty and con- 

 nected by longitudinal streaks of blackish running along the 

 shafts of the feather. The tibiae may be either immaculate or 

 faintly barred; but the crissum is immaculate in all. The two re- 

 maining specimens of the series are quite aberrant in the plumage 

 of the lower parts; thus, No. 65,918, Long Coteau River, Dakota 

 (September 9, 1873), has the abdomen, sides, and tibiae heavily 

 barred with rufous, of a more rusty, or less ochraceous, tint than 

 that of the breast; these bars are rather broader than the inter- 

 vening whitish ones, are very irregularly defined, and become 

 narrower and fainter on the tibiae ; the crissum has a small and 

 very faint transverse bar near the tip of each feather. The 

 feathers of the sides have blackish shaft-streaks. No. 5,576, North 

 Platte (August 21, 1856), has the rusty-rufous of the breast con- 

 tinued back to the anal-region and tibiae ; the abdomen, sides, 

 and flanks are variegated only by the sharply-defined black shaft- 

 streaks on each feather ; the tibiae and anal-region are transversly 

 broken by paler bar-like " washings ;" the crissum is white with 

 distant bars of rusty. 



A series of nineteen adult females in the normal plumage pre- 



