PASSERINE BIRDS OF NEW YORK 103 



men will some day be forthcoming from the tropics where the 

 change from grcen to red probably takes place. Similar facts 

 point to a similar moult in the Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Habia 

 ludoviciana] which a winter specimen from Ecuador in the 

 British Museum collection confirms, and I have seen one bird 

 taken near New York still showing several rectrices partly 

 grown. Again if we examine Baltimore Orioles (Icterus galbuld) 

 when they reach us in May we shall find birds with black worn 

 wings, wing coverts, tertiaries and tails . and others with brown 

 worn wings while the rest of the plumage is fresh and new. 

 The inference is a moult in young birds and none in adults 

 and this is proved by two young winter birds from Central 

 America, unfortunately without other data which show new 

 growing feathers at the points where a moult regularly begins. 

 These examples are only several among many that could be 

 adduced to show upon what slender but conclusive evidence one 

 must work. The only reason it is slender is because the number 

 of specimens from southern latitudes is small, and when this 

 deficiency is remedied, I am convinced the difficulties with which 

 I have had to contend will vanish. We will then know, for in- 

 stance, when it is that the young King-bird (Tyrannus tyrannus) 

 exchanges the two outer rounded primaries for the emarginate 

 ones with which it returns and when the young Barn Swallow 

 (Chelidon crythrogastrd) assumes the attenuated lateral tail 

 feathers so different from the ones worn when it leaves us in the 

 autumn. (See plate II, figs. 18-21.) Probably no one claims 

 nowadays that these new shapes are attained without growth of 

 new feathers, and yet equally strange claims of color change 

 without moult have been put forth when there were no speci- 

 mens taken at the proper season to prove their absurdity. 



In order to show at a glance the relation that exists in the 

 sequence of plumages and moults they are tabulated below in 

 such form that they may be made applicable to any species. 

 The terms employed have been chosen, so far as is compatible 

 with conciseness, from those in common use. Some are neces- 

 sarily new but I have selected all of them with the object of 

 making antithesis as obvious as possible. 



