PLUMAGES OF THE OSTRICH DTTERDEN. 563 



on the body and wings, and have one or more of the plumules pro- 

 longed in a hair-like fashion. These hair-like feathers become bristly 

 on the head, and form a special tuft around the ear openings, and also 

 serve as eyelashes to the eyelids. The head and neck feathers of the 

 chick are tufts of plumules like those on the body, only much smaller. 

 Examples of the same feathers as they occur in the adult are shown 

 in plate 8, figure 1, and are seen to have advanced very little beyond 

 ordinary down. They do not overlap one another like the feathers 

 on the body and wings. 



The neck and head feathers vary in color in the chick, and on the 

 neck the colors are so arranged as to give rise to from five to nine 

 longitudinal dark bands, which are either continuous throughout the 

 long neck or interrupted. Usually the dorsal three or five bands are 

 continuous, while the rest are broken and somewhat ill defined. They 

 are shown on the chicks in plate 1. On the head the dark feathers are 

 arranged so as to produce a V-shaped pattern, the angle of the 

 V pointing toward the beak. The sides of the V are either continuous 

 or interrupted, this, according to some, denoting a sexual difference. 

 The general color effect of the upper part of the head is a rich brown, 

 shading off down the neck. On some chicks a small naked patch 

 occurs on the back of the head and disappears later. 



The down feathers of the back and sides of the body also vary 

 in color from light to dark brown or nearly black, and, being inter- 

 mingled, give a characteristic mottled appearance to the chick, as 

 shown in plate 1, figure 2; the feathers on the under surface and in 

 front are much paler in color, either yellow or white. But newly 

 hatched chicks vary much in the general light or dark brown appear- 

 ance of the natal plumage as a whole, dependent upon the relative 

 number of the light and dark feathers. In some down feathers, 

 light and dark plumules are intermingled, but usually a feather is 

 either one shade or the other. 



Both natal and chick feathers are found covering the outer surface 

 of most of the upper region of the leg, but as the birds become older 

 they largely disappear from this part, leaving the legs altogether 

 naked (pi. 3, fig. 1) ; impressions of the sockets, however, remain for 

 a long time. 



The natal feathers are not molted in the ordinary manner of 

 later feathers. A week or two after birth they begin to be pushed 

 out of the feather sockets by the chick feathers growing below, the 

 first to appear being those along the sides of the hinder part of the 

 body. The down remains continuous with the tip of the new feather, 

 and there persists until broken or worn off. On the tip of the wing 

 quills the natal feathers remain for six months or more; that is, 

 until the feathers (spadonas) are clipped or the tips worn away 

 (pi. 2, fig. 4). 



