740 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



or blotches of whitish; secondaries more minutely mottled (producing 

 a more grayish effect), and crossed by about five to eight bands of 

 mottled dusky; primary coverts darker, crossed by three or four 

 bands of blackish; primaries with ground color more ochraceous or 

 buffy, finely mottled or vermiculated, and crossed by six to nine 

 transverse series of quadrate spots of dusky; ground color of tail 

 light tawny or ochraceous, transversely mottled with dusky, more 

 whitish terminally, and crossed by six or seven bands of mottled 

 dusky, these about equal in width to the paler interspaces and 

 bands broken or sometimes even quite obliterated on middle rectrices, 

 where the darker markings have an obhque or, sometimes, even 

 longitudinal tendency; ear-tufts with outer webs black, their inner 

 webs mostly ochraceous; "eyebrows" (superciliary region) dull 

 whitish, the feathers with blackish shafts; face dingy ochraceous or 

 dull tawny, passing into dull whitish around eyes; a crescentic 

 mark of black bordering upper eyelid and confluent with black of 

 ear-tufts; facial circle black, except across throat; a conspicuous, 

 crescentic area of immaculate white across foreneck, the feathers 

 white to extreme base; rest of under parts with white predominating, 

 but tawny or ochraceous prevalent on sides of breast and showing as 

 the base color wherever the feathers are disarranged ; sides of chest, 

 breast, and abdomen, sides, and flanks, with numerous sharply defined 

 transverse bars of brownish black, these narrower and less sharply 

 defined anteriorly, the center of upper breast immaculate white; a 

 series of large spots or blotches of black on chest, below the wliite 

 collar; under tail-coverts with bars farther apart than on other under 

 parts; legs and toes dull tawny to pale buff, usually immaculate, or 

 nearly so, more rarely flecked or spotted with dusky; bill duU slate- 

 black or blackish slate; iris bright lemon-chrome yellow; bare por- 

 tion of toes light brownish gray or ashy (in life) ; claws horn color, 

 passing into black terminally. 



Young. — Remiges and rectrices as in adults; downy plumage of 

 head, neck, and body ochraceous or buff, relieved by detached, rather 

 distant, bars of black. 



Adult male.— Wmg, 320-355 (343.3); tail, 190-210 (199.4) ; cuhnen, 

 (from cere), 26-30 (28.6).° 



Adult female.— W'mg, 352-380 (366.3) tail; 200-225 (218); cuhnen 

 (from cere), 29-32.5 (30.6).^ 



o Seven specimens. 



6 Six specimens. 



The description given above applies to specimens of average coloration which, per- 

 haps, constitute a majority. As Mr. Oberholser remarks (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 

 xxvii, 1904, 189), there are, however, two other phases of B. v. virginianus — one in which 

 the coloration is light, and the place of the rufous or tawny hues is taken by ochraceous ; 

 the other in which grayish and blackish colors predominate, all three phases being 

 connected by intermediates. The last seems to be most prevalent in the New Eng- 

 land States, and possibly indicates vergence toward B. v. heterocnemis. 



