182 MACHETES PUGNAX. 



before the vessel reached London. On inquiry of the person 

 who had charge of them, ' Would it not have been better to 

 place them in smaller baskets V the reply was, that it would 

 have been quite the same as to the fighting and deaths 

 produced." 



Young. — The following description of the young in full 

 plumage is taken from two individuals shot on the shores of 

 the Firth of Forth in autumn, and a specimen from Norway. 

 The bill is black ; the feet greenish-black. The upper part 

 of the head light red streaked with black ; the upper hind- 

 neck duller, with larger and fainter spots ; the rest of the 

 hind-neck, the fore part of the back, and the scapulars 

 brownish-black, with light red margins ; the feathers of the 

 hind part of the back dusky grey, with dull light red edges. 

 Wing-coverts glossy greenish-grey, black toward the end, 

 and edged with pale reddish-grey ; quills dusky, glossed with 

 green, margined with whitish ; the inner secondaries edged 

 with light red. Tail-feathers grey, glossed with green, edged 

 with red, the four middle darker, all with dusky markings 

 toward the end. The fore-neck and part of the breast and 

 sides are pale greyish-red, the other parts white. 



In September, 1840, I procured two young individuals, 

 a male and a female, which had been shot on the Forth near 

 Stirling. 



In both, the tongue was one inch in length ; the oesopha- 

 gus five, the stomach an inch and two-twelfths long, an inch 

 and one-twelfth in breadth ; the intestine in the male 

 measured seventeen inches, in the female eighteen ; coeca in 

 the former an inch and ten-twelfths, in the latter two inches, 

 their greatest width two-twelfths ; the rectum in both two 

 inches and a quarter. The stomach broadly elliptical, com- 

 pressed, with strong muscles and radiated tendons; the 

 epithelium very thin, dense, elastic, longitudinally rugous, 

 dull yellow. The contents of the stomach were small Crus- 

 tacea, insects, and fresh-water univalve shells, with numerous 

 fragments of quartz, rounded and smoothed, the largest two- 

 twelfths in diameter. 



