119 
on the shafts indicate where the bars once were, and then these 
also disappear, and leave the central feathers of a pure grey 
brown, or perhaps, I should say, brownish dove-colour in the 
females, and french grey in the males, narrowly tipped with 
white, and with one moderately broad subterminal deep brown 
bar, which itself soon disappears in the males, and even in the 
females, as time runs on, becomes more feeble, and more of a 
spot, and in one old female I now have, has entirely disappeared. 
Simultaneously, the bars on the inner web of the outer tail 
feather on each side, begin to show less and less on the under 
surface, from which after a time they altogether disappear, and 
having during this process, grown feeble on the upper surface 
too, go on fading and fading, tall at last they disappear there 
sO. 
The lateral tail feathers share in the change ; those immediate- 
ly next the central ones, lose all bars on their outer webs, except 
the terminal one, which is much reduced ; while in the next two, 
on either side, the bars on the outer webs become very faint, and 
though this seems exceptional in the females, I have a specimen 
in which a// the lateral tail feathers have lost @// the bars except 
the terminal one from their outer webs, and in the old males 
this seems the rule ; even the terminal bar in these latter, becom- 
ing feeble and ill-defined. 
Besides the minor differences poimted out in the foregoing, 
between the sexes and the important one of size, it should be 
noted that while the old male, becomes a sort of hoary ashy blue 
on the back and scapulars, the females seem never to become 
more than a pale brownish ashy ; moreover, the rufous brown of 
the breast and upper abdomen is deeper in the adult female 
than im the male, and there is more of if. 
The changes above described, do not always take place at the 
same period; specimens may be met with, with the back and 
scapulars ashy, and yet with bars on all the tail feathers, white 
at other times, quite brown birds that show still, here and there, 
faint traces of rufous margins to the back plumage, will be found 
to have lost most of the tail bars. 
Tn almost every case, the chin and throat are white and free 
from longitudinal sfrie, but have a conspicuous dark central 
stripe. I had, however, an adult female with plenty of these 
stn, and in old males, the central stripe often grows very faint, 
and has entirely disappeared in one specimen in my museum. 
The length of wing, tarsus and mid toe, varies a good deal, as 
will have been seen; the thickness of the tarsus even, is not in- 
variable, and the more I study this group, the more doubiful do 
I feel of the value of most of the characters relied on as specific, 
