SHARP-TAILED GROUSE. 307 



a narrow terminal margin, those nearest the tertials are also slightly 

 marked with rusty ; the tertials themselves are similar to the scapulars, 

 that is, they are black, banded and sprinkled with different shades of 

 rusty. The tail is strongly cuneiform and graduated, of eighteen 

 feathers, with the middle five inches long, which is three more than 

 the outer. According to some accounts, the two middle feathers are 

 by more than two inches longer than the adjoining, but in all we have 

 examined the difference was little more than an inch. The four mid- 

 dle are similar in shape, texture, and color, being narrow, flaccid, equal 

 in breadth throughout, though somewhat dilated and cut square at the 

 end. In color they vary considerably in different specimens, the ground 

 being generally black, and the tips white, but more or less varied, in 

 some with white and in others with rusty, these colors being at one time 

 pure, at another sprinkled with blackish, and assuming various tints ; 

 in one specimen they are disposed in spots, in another in bands, lines, 

 chains, angles, &c., but generally in a long stripe on each side of the 

 shaft at base, and in transverse spots at the point of the two longest, 

 while they are in round spots all along each side of the two shortest: 

 in one specimen the latter are even almost plain, being dingy white, 

 sprinkled with blackish on the whole of their outer web : all the other 

 lateral feathers, entirely concealed by the coverts, are pure white at the 

 point, but with dusky shafts, and arc more or less broadly dark cine- 

 reous at base : these feathers are very rigid, and of a curious form, 

 tapering from the base to the point, where they suddenly dilate ; they 

 are deeply emarginate at tip, and their inner lobe projects considerably. 

 The tarsus is two inches long; the slender hair-like feathers covering it 

 are, as well as the femorals, of a dingy grayish white, obsoletely waved 

 with dusky ; the toes are strongly pectinated, and are, as well as the 

 nails, of a blackish dusky, while the long processes are whitish. 



The foregoing minute description is chiefly taken from a handsome 

 male specimen from Arctic America. There is no difference between 

 the sexes, at least we have not been able to detect any in all the speci- 

 mens of both that we have examined : hence we conclude that the differ- 

 ence generally described by authors, and which we have ourselves copied 

 in our Synopsis, that of the breast being chocolate brown in the male, 

 and uniform with the rest of the plumage in the female, does not exisi. 

 The female is merely less bright and glossy. Both sexes, like other 

 Grouse, have a papillous red membrane over the eye, not always seen 

 in stuffed skins, and which is said to be very vivid in the male of this 

 species in the breeding season. This membrane, an inch in length, 

 becomes distended, and projects above the eye in the shape of a small 

 crest, three-eighths of an inch high. The male at this season, like that 

 of other species, and indeed of most gallinaceous birds, struts about in 

 a very stately manner, carrying himself very upright. The middle 



