BLACKBIRD. 209 



with grey or brown, and the margins of the quills brown. In 

 the adult female the upper parts are sometimes of a lighter 

 brown, the forehead tinged with rust-colour, and the neck in 

 front brownish red, spotted as usual, namely, in some faint 

 degree, as the Thrushes. 



Varieties more or less pied with white are not of very 

 unfrequent occurrence. Mr. Jesse, in his 'Gleanings in Natural 

 History,' mentions a pair of white ones in the grounds of a 

 nobleman at Blackheath, near London, whose brood were also 

 white, so that it could not in their case have been an 

 accidental circumstance. Some are cream-coloured. In one 

 the top of the head and the breast and wings were black, 

 the rest white. One in the Zoological Gardens, London, 

 white, with reddish bill and eyelids. One with a white head. 

 One white, with black feathers interspersed; the quills and 

 tail, black, except two feathers of the latter and one of the 

 former; the bill, pale yellow; the feet, dusky, curiously 

 variegated with pale yellow. One with the lower parts 

 variegated with grey and greyish brown feathers. One 

 patched with white, some of the quills being also of that 

 colour. One with the head white, and also the neck, the 

 latter divided by a black band, with a few white feathers 

 interspersed, and one or two more on the shoulder. Another 

 with the nape of the neck white, shading off with the same 

 colour towards the head. One, a female, white, with a few 

 brown feathers on the shoulders. One silvery white all over. 

 The late William Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, describes one 

 which had a white head, and the whole of the upper plumage 

 black, like a male, while the under plumage was that of a 

 female, a specimen, in the language of the Pigeon-fanciers, 

 of a 'Hooded Nun.' One had the quill feathers white and 

 the wing coverts black. 



One of these birds, which had been kept by the Rev. J. 

 Pemberton Bartlett from the nest, became white on both 

 wings in its sixth year, the following year's moult restoring 

 it to its original plumage; another was noticed by Mr. Bix, 

 near Norwich, which had at first shewed one 'white feather' 

 in its tail, and the next year it had two or three, and the 

 head, neck, and back much speckled with similar ones. 

 One, a female, of a complete cream-colour, with yellow bill 

 and legs, was shot by Mr. George Johnson, of Melton Ross, 

 near Brigg, Lincolnshire. 



VOL. HI. 1> 



