VoL XIXJ DwiGHT, Plumage-Cycles. 249 



seasonal line may be drawn, even in countries that have springs 

 and falls. Then again it has been customary to class as 'im- 

 mature' several different stages of plumage now too well under- 

 stood to permit of such lax classification. The fact is, plumages 

 and moults have outgrown their nomenclature, as the various terms 

 of writers clearly indicate, and while I have been in good company 

 in sticking to the seasonal idea, I have long felt that we must 

 come to a wider view. 



We may not all agree as to what constitutes a plumage and 

 what a moult, but we know that plumage is made up of suc- 

 cessive generations or crops of feathers that, with the exception 

 of the first, grow at periods of moult, and that the feathers remain, 

 even though sadly altered by wear, until the next moult. A 

 complete moult can only result in a simple plumage, all the 

 feathers of the generation being of about the same age, but if the 

 moult be partial the resulting plumage will be compound and 

 made up of new feathers more or less mixed, according to cir- 

 cumstances, with those of an earlier generation. Now, it seems 

 to me, there are three great and distinct epochs of plumage in 

 the life-cvcle of the bird corresponding in a measure to infancy, 

 youth and manhood in the human being, and three adjectives are 

 applicable to them, viz. natal (Lat. fiatalis), juvenal {l^-^t. J itveiia- 

 lis), and nuptial (Lat. niipfialis). The natal plumage consists of 

 the down-like feathers of the first generation known as neossop- 

 tiles, the juvenal plumage consists of feathers of the second 

 generation, and the nuptial includes the later generations. But 

 as a matter of fact such simplicity of plumages is rarely found ; 

 the natal plumage may be lacking, the juvenal is worn wholly or 

 in part as a first nuptial, and the nuptial is supplemented by non- 

 nuptial and protective stages. 



From time immemorial, the adult plumage of the breeding 

 season has been accepted as the one most typical of the species, 

 and the moult by which it is entirely swept away forms a fixed 

 point in every plumage-cycle. The plumage may well be called 

 the nuptial and the moult the postnuptial. Some species at the 

 postnuptial moult acquire an annual plumage lasting through the 

 whole year until the next postnuptial period ; other species acquire 

 a distinctly non-nuptial plumage which, at the prenuptial moult prior 



