172 MACHETES PUGNAX. 



feet orange or yellow. Female without tubercles or ornamen- 

 tal feathers ; the upper parts greyish-brown, glossed with 

 green, the fore neck and breast paler ; the bill and feet dusky. 

 Young with the lower parts pale reddish anteriorly, white 

 behind ; the feathers of the upper parts black, margined with 

 light red. 



This bird is remarkable for two circumstances connected 

 with its habits, it being polygamous, and during the breeding 

 season extremely pugnacious. Two circumstances relative 

 to its plumage are also peculiar ; in spring it acquires an 

 enormous ruff of feathers on the neck and a multitude of 

 fleshy tubercles on the face, which disappear in July ; and 

 the colours of the ruff especially, as well as of the body, are 

 so diversified that hardly two individuals can be found pre- 

 cisely alike. As in every other instance, I shall first describe 

 the bird in its winter plumage. 



Male in Winter. — The general form of the Ruff is 

 rather slender ; the body being moderate, the neck rather 

 long, the head rather small, ovate, somewhat compressed. 

 The bill is of the same length as the head, straight, slender, 

 higher than broad, toward the end depressed; both man- 

 dibles laterally grooved nearly to the end, with the edges 

 soft and blunt, the tips a little enlarged and obtuse. The 

 nostrils are linear, small, three-twelfths long, sub-basal, sub- 

 marginal, direct. The eyes are of moderate size ; the aper- 

 ture of the ear roundish and rather large. The legs are 

 rather long and slender ; the tibia is bare for an inch, or one 

 third of its length ; the tarsus has twenty-eight anterior 

 scutella, and a greater number behind ; the hind toe, which 

 is very small, has four, the second toe twenty, the third 

 twenty-eight, the fourth twenty-six scutella ; the anterior 

 toes are long, slender, compressed, marginate, the third and 

 fourth connected by a basal web, the second a little shorter 

 than the fourth. The claws are of moderate length, very 

 slender, much compressed, tapering, pointed, arched. 



The plumage is soft and rather blended, unless on the 

 back and wings ; the feathers generally ovate. The wings 



