RED-THROATED DIVER. 341 



forms a conical patch, the point of wliich is directed upwards, 

 the base resting on the breast, which is white ; all the under 

 surface of the body white ; flanks greyish black ; legs, toes, 

 and their membranes dark brown on one surface, pale wood- 

 brown on the other. Male birds measure twenty-four inches 

 in length, and sometimes rather more ; from the carpal joint 

 to the end of the longest quill-feather eleven inches and a 

 half. Females are usually smaller, some measuring only 

 twenty-one inches in length, and but ten inches and a 

 quarter from the wrist to the end of the quill- feather. A 

 female specimen in my own collection, killed in April 1822, 

 has the red feathers on the throat mixed with some that are 

 white. 



Colonel Sabine, in his supplement to the Appendix of the 

 first Arctic voyage of Sir Edward Parry, says of the Red- 

 throated Diver, " that it breeds in the neighbourhood of 

 fresh-water ponds on the shores of Baffin"'s Bay, and Davis"* 

 Straits. The young birds, killed in September, were in the 

 plumage in which they have been called C. stellatus ; but 

 when nestlings, the feathers of the back, scapulars, and wing- 

 coverts, were margined with white." This is precisely the 

 case in the young bird from which the upper figure in our 

 illustration was taken, and is the smallest specimen I possess. 

 The white border is first interrupted at the extreme end of 

 the feather, leaving the white marks as two long lateral lines. 

 These lines of white diminish in length by degrees, leaving 

 only one white spot on each outer edge of the feather ; the 

 term striatus, used by some authors, would therefore appear 

 to refer to an earlier stage of plumage than the word stellattis, 

 and of the Speckled Divers of Bewick, the second Speckled 

 Diver is, I believe, the younger bird of the two. 



Montagu, in his Supplement, says that both sexes have 

 been killed in winter with the red throat ; and Mr. Audubon 

 and Mr. Dann mention that the throat remains of a dark 



