COLYMBID&. Dae 
dusky, nearly black; the face and chin white; there 
is a frill of long feathers all round the face, bay at 
the base and shaded to black at the tip; back of the 
neck, back and all the upper parts dull dusky brown, 
some of the feathers margined with pale ash-erey; 
the wing-coverts are without the margins; the 
secondary quills are white; primaries dusky brown ; 
the fore part of the neck, the breast and belly are 
silky white; the flanks and thighs mixed bay, dusky 
and white; the tail—if such it can be called, for it is 
very rudimentary—is the same colour as the back; 
the legs and toes are dark on the outer surface and 
pale yellowish green on the inner. The plumage of 
another bird in my collection, which was shot in 
Torbay in the winter, is as follows :—The head and 
ear-tufts are dusky; the lore dusky; over this and 
over the eye to the face, the face and frill white, ex- 
cept the tips of the frill, which are clouded with pale 
dusky; all the rest of the plumage much the same as 
in the other bird, except the flanks and thighs, which 
are mixed dusky and white, without any of the bay. 
I always considered this the winter plumage, as all 
the birds I had seen about the south coast of Devon, 
either alive or recently killed, were in the same 
plumage: Yarrell, however, does not make any dis- 
tinction between summer and winter plumage; and 
Meyer describes a bird of two years old as very much 
like this last-named bird of mine; so it may be a 
second-year bird, but it 1s certainly odd that so great 
