Letters, Notes and Extracts. 219 
mantle in whatever stages of growth they may be, even when 
only just breaking from the sheath, brilliantly coloured with 
red ; and (6) in the females, in many cases, feathers on the 
mantle in the same condition, except that the red colouring 
is not usually so brilliant as in the males. 
(2) Mr. Nicoil’s specimen (which I have examined) has 
not completed its moult, and new rufous-marked feathers 
would, I think, have grown subsequently if the bird had 
lived. This is the more probable because there are two 
or three feathers on the mantle marked with rufous, which 
possibly escaped Mr. Nicoll’s observation owing to their 
being covered by the long fringes of other feathers. 
(3) Like that of many other Waders, especially in the 
female birds, the spring-moult of the Curlew-Sandpiper is 
often arrested for a period, and is then resumed, so that a 
partially-moulted bird which shews no moult in progress 
may subsequently grow more summer-feathers and lose more 
winter ones. 
(4) The female Curlew-Sandpiper, although sometimes 
attaining almost the brilliancy of the male in summer- 
plumage, is more often much less vividly coloured and not 
infrequently has no rufous colouring on the mantle. <A 
female shot August 12th is an example; it is beginning its 
autumnal moult, and the old summer-feathers on the mantle 
are marked with black and have no more red than Mr. Nicoll’s 
bird, which would be exactly like it when the grey edgings 
of its new feathers were worn off. 
To shew the danger of basing a conclusion as to the pro- 
cesses of moult upon a few specimens, I may mention that a 
female Curlew-Sandpipers in my own collection and four 
others in the British Museum, taken in the months of May, 
June, and July, are in various stages of moult, but the new 
feathers are like the old winter-feathers. In other words, 
these birds have for some reason—connected, no doubt, with 
the condition of the bird—failed to grow any proper summer- 
feathers, but have grown new winter-feathers mstead. Mr. 
Nicoll’s bird is not in this case, but is growing summer- 
feathers marked with black but not with red—a plumage 
