SHORE-LARK. 613 



on our coasts, being birds of tbe year with their wings not 

 fully grown, this order is not observed. 



The female is rather smaller, and wants the black band 

 and horns on the top of the head, that part being only a little 

 darker than the rest ; the lores and cheeks are mottled with . 

 black ; the pink tinge of the upper parts is much less per- 

 ceptible ; the chin is of a dull yellow, the black gorget is 

 smaller, duller and mottled, and the lower parts are of a 

 dirty white. 



The young male of the year, after the first moult, resem- 

 bles the adult female. 



The nestling has the bill and legs of a dirty flesh-colour : 

 the lores and sides of the head mottled with black and straw- 

 colour ; the whole upper plumage dark brown, each feather 

 edged with ochreous ; the throat pale primrose-yellow with 

 black, lanceolate streaks ; the breast and lower parts dull 

 ochreous-white, deepest in hue on the flanks. In this stage 

 the bird nearly resembles the more typical Larks. 



This species was originally separated from the genus 

 Alaucla in 1828 by Friedrich Boie, under the name of Eremo- 

 phila ; but Eremopliilus having been previously applied to a 

 genus of fishes by Humboldt, that name was, according to 

 usage, dropped, and the eldest Brehm, in 1831, proposed 

 instead PJilleremus — a name equally objectionable since 

 Latreille had already established, it as that of a genus of 

 insects. Bonaparte's Otocorys therefore stands, though there 

 is some doubt as to the year in which it was first applied*. 



* Bonaparte and Gr R. Gray after him assign 1839 as the date, but the earliest 

 use of the word appears to be in the Introduction to tbe former's ' Fauna Italica' 

 as above cited (page 604, note), and this from internal evidence must have been i 

 written after Keyserling and Blasius's ' Wirbelthiere Europa's' which bears/ 

 date 1840. 



