VOl i896 IU ] Recent Literature. l6c 



taken between April 2 and May 22 show various stages of the moult. 

 '•Many of these new black or rufous and black feathers are half grown, 

 while a few are fully grown and their unworn edges are in strong contrast 

 to the ragged borders of the gray winter plumage." In one specimen, 

 " one cannot raise the plumage of any part of the body without discover- 

 ing numbers of growing new feathers wrapped in their dermal sheaths." 

 Twenty specimens of the Sanderling likewise show a moult in progress 

 during March, April and May. Mr. Chapman has also seen moulting 

 spring specimens of the Golden Plover, Knot and others of the Limicohe, 

 in which group Gatke states that color changes without moult frequently 

 occur. That no moulting birds should have fallen into this ornithologist's 

 hands is most surprising, and yet on hardly any other assumption can we 

 understand his reaffirmation of the old idea of a color change in worn 

 feathers with restoration by a new growth of the ragged edges. Inasmuch 

 as this theory, resting as it does, upon a most unphysiological basis, is 

 overset in the case of two of the species cited by Gatke in its support, 

 what grounds have we for believing it will apply to any of the others? 



He asserts almost dogmatically that a number of species acquire their 

 summer dress without spring moult and Mr. Chapman shows us specimens 

 of two of these very species in the midst of a moult at the time when 

 Gatke declares they are simply growing new barbs on the old feathers 

 and providing in them a fresh influx of new pigment. Can there be any 

 doubt as to who is in error? If fifty years' experience with the birds of 

 Heligoland leads to such deductions as these we may well wonder on what 

 sort of material they are based and hope for more light upon the other 

 species which Gatke has deprived of the normal way of changing their 

 plumage by a moult. To Mr. Chapman we are indebted for the valuable 

 contribution he makes to a subject which has long vexed those who have 

 been readier with strange theories to fit obvious facts than with material 

 to substantiate their theories. —J. D., Jr. 



Chapman on the Plumage of the Snowflake. 1 — -The gradual change 

 from the brown tinged winter plumage of the Snowflake into its abraded 

 black and white summer dress is clearly demonstrated to occur without 

 the loss of a single feather. Diagrams show at a glance that the dorsal 

 feathers of the male during the winter gradually lose their brownish 

 margins and by June " in place of the rounded outline of the brown- 

 tipped feather we have left only its pointed black base. The rest of the 

 plumage undergoes a similar alteration which in some places is evidently 

 assisted by fading." The knowledge of this change without moult is not 

 new, although among our early writers Wilson and Audubon do not seem 

 to have been aware of it. Richardson and Swainson in ' Fauna Boreali- 



1 On the Changes of Plumage in the Snowflake (Plectropkenax nivalis). By 

 Frank M. Chapman. Bull. Amer. Mus. Xat. Hist., VIII, Art. II.. pp. 9-12 

 (March 5, 1S96). 



