104 DWIGHT 



The first column contains the plumages in their natural se- 

 quence and the second the moults which (unless suppressed) fol- 

 low each of them. 



Just as soon as a young bird becomes indistinguishable in plu- 

 mage, from an adult, " first," " second" or " third" may be drop- 

 ped and "adult" substituted, both for plumages and for moults, 

 the plumages being thereafter "Adult Nuptial" and "Adult 

 Winter" and the moults simply " Prenuptial" and " Postnuptial" 

 as long as the bird lives. As a matter of fact in none of the 

 Passerine species which I have studied are there more than six 

 plumages and six moults, except in a few rare individual cases, be- 

 fore a bird becomes indistinguishable from one that may have had 

 twice as many. In most species the identity of old and young 

 is lost much earlier, the rule being that young assume adult 

 plumage never later than the moult at which they first renew 

 the remiges and rectrices. Wear with its abrasion and fading 

 often takes the place wholly or in part of a prenuptial moult, 

 modifying in marked degree either the first winter or the adult 

 winter dress. Consequently the plumage to which I would re- 

 strict the name nuptial may be acquired by moult, by wear or 

 by both, and it is not the true breeding plumage. The latter 

 may be either a fresh nuptial or a worn nuptial, but as the dif- 

 ferences produced by wear after the prenuptial moult are usually 

 not very obvious, it would be inexpedient to try to draw too 

 sharp a line between " nuptial" and " breeding," although recog- 

 nizing a distinction. The breeding plumage, then, on which 

 descriptions of species are based does not, in very many cases, 

 represent the highest plumage of the species ; it may be a mix- 



