110 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



white. A male from Arizona in Mr. Aiken's collection has the 

 lining of the wing deep rusty rufous with blackish shaft-streaks, 

 the breast and tibiae blackish-brown. 



The plumage of the young varies between great extremes, and 

 were it not for the specific characters at once recognizable in the 

 peculiar proportions, and characteristic details of structure, cer- 

 tain individuals could not be identified at all. There is, however, 

 an average style of which the specimen described on p. 112 (No. 

 10,161) is a fair representative. Upwards of twenty specimens 

 have been examined, and sixteen are now before me. Of the series 

 now under consideration, twelve have the ground-, and prevailing, 

 color of the head, neck, and lower parts, soft, fine ochraceous-buff, 

 or deep cream-color. Only one is without spots on the lower parts 

 posterior to the jugulum. On two, the black spotting nearly 

 equals in extent of color the ochraceous ;' the tibiae are heavily 

 spotted, upon a rusty ochraceous ground. In one of them, the 

 crissum is also distantly barred. The remainder of the series have 

 the crissum immaculate, five of them have the tibia? more or less 

 barred, while no two are alike in the quantity of spotting on the 

 breast, abdomen, etc., or in the exact shape and distribution of the 

 spots though the whole series is intermediate in these respects 

 between the two specimens mentioned above as the light and dark 

 extremes of the series, and which were taken from the same nest. 



Three others differ from the above series in having the around- 

 color of the head, neck, and lower parts nearly white, with only a 

 slight tingeof ochraceous, and with the few markings of the lower 

 surface restricted chiefly to the sides of the breast. The}' are from 

 Buenos Ay res, Costa Rica, and Nebraska ; and though from 

 localities so remote from each other, the}' are almost as nearly 

 duplicates of each other as is ever seen but of these specimens, 

 I have more to say beyond (see page ). The remaining one is 

 a young example of the melanistic plumage ; and in it the black 

 markings of the lower parts of course predominate over the light 

 ones. The ground-color ma}', in fact, be considered as brownish- 

 black, variegated w r ith ochraceous. 



The upper parts vary with the individual in the proportionate 



1 One of these specimens was taken from the same nest along with the 

 very light-colored one mentioned. Their parents were a very white-bellied 

 male, and a very uniformly blackish female ! 



