AQUILINE. 27 



wanting on most of the throat feathers, while it occupies the greater 

 portion of the feathers on the lower breast and abdomen ; the 

 tibial plumes, vent, and lower tail-coverts are dingy reddish-buff ; 

 the lesser and median lower wing-coverts are reddish-buff, more 

 or less centred with brown, and the greater lower wing-coverts are 

 mingled white and blackish-brown ; the lineation of the lower 

 surface is more obscure and ill-defined than in what I take to be 

 later forms of this same stage. In the next form of this stage 

 every feather of the head, nape, and upper back is brown (a 

 soft hair brown), darker than the form above described, with a 

 conspicuous narrow, fulvous, central stripe. All the wing-coverts 

 and scapulars are tipped with fulvous or fulvous- white, the lesser 

 ones narrowly, in fact with a mere spot at the tip the larger 

 ones more broadly ; the rump, back and upper tail-coverts are 

 as above described ; but the tail is a dingy wood-brown, without 

 any trace of bars, and broadly tipped with fulvous-white. 



The secondaries are conspicuously tipped with white or fulvous 

 white ; the chin, throat, and ear-coverts are unstreaked fulvous ; 

 the breast and upper two-thirds of the abdomen are a warm, 

 somewhat purplish-brown, with conspicuous, well defined, narrow, 

 central fulvous stripes ; the lesser and median lower wing- 

 coverts are more mingled with brown than in the specimen above 

 described, and the larger lower-coverts are greyish-white, mottled 

 with blackish-brown, and the axillaries, which, in the form first 

 described, were reddish-buff, mottled with brown, are in this one 

 similar to the feathers of the breast. In another form of this 

 stage the head and back resemble the form first described ; the 

 tail and wings the second ; while the chin, throat and ear-coverts 

 are very pale buff, and the breast and abdomen are of the same 

 color, each feather narrowly margined with the warm purplish- 

 brown. 



Specimens in this stage vary greatly, independently of the 

 points noted above ; in the color of the thighs, vent and lower 

 tail-coverts (which in some are nearly white, in others rufous 

 buff), and in the extent and purity of the white, or fulvous- 

 white tipping, to the tail and secondaries. The difficulty is, 

 tfiat these various differences do not go together. If the birds 

 be arranged in a series, with reference to the comparative width 

 of the central stripes of the breast feathers, which width varies, 

 as above noticed, from less than one-fifth to nearly four-fifths of the 

 total width of the feathers, and then turned back upwards, no 

 corresponding progression in the lineation of the upper surface 

 is observable, and, in order to obtain a regular series, according 

 to the extent and amount of the lineations of the upper 

 feathers, a totally different arrangement will be necessary. 

 Adopting either of these arrangements, we shall still have no 

 regular progression in the extent or purity of the white tipping 

 of the tail, or secondaries, or in the color of the lower abdo- 

 men, vent, and leg-feathers, 



