ORNITHOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS. 



49 



" orlet, ^^* not to sjjeak of the color of the deciduous parts which are 

 paiutedredinsteadof greeu, andofthe "rosette," which is made bright 

 yellow instead of flesh color. 



Mr. Bureau asserts {op. cit., 1879, p. 39) that the mental cuirass is 

 uniform in color with the rest of the under mandible, so that its exist- 

 ence is hardly suspected when the bird is in full summer or winter dress. 

 From my drawings and descriptions, it will be seen that such is not the 

 case. That piece is always differently colored from the rest of the man- 

 dible (except in the young birds), the latter being always red, while the 

 former is green in summer and deep brown in winter. It is not more 

 correct when he says {I. c.) that the " atrophic triangle" is so much re- 

 duced that its retraction does not sensibly modify the outline of the infe- 

 rior mandible. A glance at my figures on pi. i shows at once that 

 the lower outline of the mandible is considerably different in summer 

 and winter, the gonydeal angle being, in fact, situated at the middle of 

 the mandible during the latter season, while in summer the correspond- 

 ing point is placed within the basal third of the mandible. 



* I follow Mr. Bureau's nomenclature of tlie different basal pieces as closely as pos- 

 sible. The following is a synoptical table of his terms with reference to the figures 

 on pi. iii, B. S. Z. F., 1879, together with the equivalents employed by Dr. Elliott 

 Coues in a review of Bureau's discovery in the Bull. Nutt. Orn. CI., 1878, p. 89, and 

 by Dr. Theo. Gill in an article of similar object in Baird's " Annual Record of Science 

 and Industry" (" Harper's"), 1878, p. 480. In the last column will be found the En- 

 glish term corresponding to the French appellation, which I propose to adopt. 



The borny subcylindrical protuberance at the base of the culraen is not marked by 

 a distinctive letter on the figures ; in the text it is called " cimier come," a term here 

 transcribed hy " horn i/ casque." 



158G1 BuU. 29 4 



