en | PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 311 
outer webs of outer primaries more like No. 96209; No. 96202 (4, Na- 
gasaki, Dec. 25, 1882), quite similar. Henson’s No. 157 ( 6, Hakodate, 
April 16, 1884) and Stejneger’s No. 2035 ( 4 , Petropaulski, May 17, 1883), 
both in full summer plumage, are also identical with the foregoing 
specimens. Finally I have to mention a male which I shot at Petro- 
paulski, Kamtchatka, on May 17, 1883 (U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 92685); 
it is in full summer plumage, black-backed, and I dissected it myself; 
it is also the latest as to date in the series of males, yet it has more 
black on the quills than any of the foregoing ones, the proximal sec- 
ondary and the fifth primary being in fact absolutely identical with 
those of the female, figs. 2 and 3. 
So far our material has been ample and our conclusions, I think, safe. 
There remain only seven specimens, the quill pattern of six of which dif- 
fer considerably from that of the foregoing series (figs. 2-5). Although 
taken from the most extreme specimen, pl. xlv, fig. 6 represents very well 
the fifth primary of this group, as compared with figs. 3 and 5, while 
the proximal secondary is pure white, or nearly so (all or most of the 
secondaries being in fact similar). The first bird of this series to 
attract our attention is No. 96203, collected by Mr. Ringer at Nagasaki, 
December, 1879, and by him designated as a female. Nearly all the 
secondaries are pure white; the black on the outer web of the four 
outer primaries does not extend further down than on the inner web, 
and the fifth primary is colored very much like the one figured (fig. 6). 
Should the determination of the sex be correct, I should think it most 
probable that this pattern had beenassumed after the molt in the third 
autumn, since the difference seems to be too great to be only an indi- 
vidual variation of quill pattern (fig. 5). A September male (Yezo, 
Blakiston, No. 2956; U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 96200) and a summer bird, 
male, collected in the Kurils by Mr. Snow (U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 96198), 
on the other hand, are quite similar, having the black apical patch on 
the fifth primary somewhat larger than in fig. 6, the latter being eol- 
lected at Hakodate in March by Capt. Blakiston (U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 
96197). It will be observed that the difference between these males 
and the lighter ones already referred to the type represented by figs. 
4and 5 is not so great as to preclude the possibility of their being only 
individual variations of the same stage of plumage, and it must be ad- 
mitted thatthe three last specimens of our collection, which we have 
not yet mentioned, seem to point in this direction. The first of these 
isa 2 collected by Mr. Henson at Hakodute, May 16, 1883 (U.S. Nat. 
Mus., No. 96199), the left wing of which is quite normal, with a fifth 
primary like fig. 6, but with some dusky marks on the proximal second- 
ary. In the right wing, however, fourth and fifth primaries, although 
apparently fully grown, are considerably shorter than normally, and 
the greater pureness of the white color at once indicates that they 
are of more recent origin than the rest, in other words, that they have 
recently grown out in the place of the old ones which had been lost 
