140 WEEN. 



Male; weight, about two drachms and three quarters; length, 

 about four inches or a little over; the bill is rather long, 

 and rounded at the tip, and is slender in shape, the upper 

 mandible dark brown, the lower paler, the tip only dark; 

 iris, dark brown; over it is a streak of pale brown. Head 

 on the crown, neck on the back, and nape, rusty reddish 

 brown barred transversely with narrow streaks of dark brown ; 

 chin and throat, plain greyish dull buff, as is the breast, but 

 darker lower down, and reddish brown on the sides; back, 

 reddish brown, marked with transverse dusky bars. 



The wings, which are much rounded, have the first feather 

 only half as long as the second, which is of the same length 

 as the seventh; the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth nearly 

 equal in length, but the fourth the longest, with three or 

 four small round white spots ; greater and lesser wing coverts, 

 also rufous, and barred; primaries, barred alternately with 

 tawny brown and black; secondaries and tertiaries, dusky, 

 barred on the outer webs with reddish white. The upper 

 tail coverts, which extend over more than half the tail, have 

 the two outer feathers shorter than the others; under tail 

 coverts, of like length, reddish brown, indistinctly barred with 

 darker brown, and tipped with dull white. Legs, toes, and 

 claws, light brown. 



The female is rather less in size, rather more red in colour, 

 and the transverse bars less distinct. 



Since this article was written, and while it was on its way 

 to the press, I have received the most melancholy intelligence 

 of the awful death on the railway, near Betford, of my dear 

 friend whose name I have mentioned in it, Hugh Edwin 

 Strickland. Little did I think, when I sat next to him at 

 the dinner on the first day of the meeting of the British 

 Association at Hull, for which we had secured the two adjoining 

 places, that I should never see him again; as little that a 

 letter he forwarded to me in the interim would be the last 

 I should ever receive from him; as little when he spoke of 

 having attended every, or nearly every previous meeting that 

 he would never attend another; and as little when we wished 

 one another good-bye in his lodging, where he left me writing, 

 on the last day of the meeting, but twenty-four hours 

 before his death, that we should never again meet in this 

 world! Alas! that the words of Professor Sedgwick, near 



