366 TETRAOJS T ID,E. 



plumage pure white ; shafts of the primary quill-feathers 

 black ; the four upper tail-feathers white ; the fourteen 

 other tail-feathers black, tipped with white ; legs and toes 

 white, the claws black. The male in May and November 

 has the beak, the lore, and the space behind the eye, black ; 

 over the eye a naked red skin ; the throat white ; head and 

 neck mottled with blackish and speckled grey feathers, 

 a few others with narrow bars of black and ochreous 

 yellow ; the white feathers assuming the greyish black by a 

 change of the colour, as particularly observed in progress in 

 a male bird in March, when pen feathers, which were then 

 growing, were all greyish black; the breast, back, and 

 upper tail-feathers, nearly uniform speckled grey ; the 

 fourteen under tail-feathers black ; the wings, the under 

 surface of the body, and the legs, white. 



The whole length of a male fifteen inches and a quarter. 

 From the carpal joint to the end of the wing, eight inches : 

 the first quill-feather an inch and a half shorter than the se- 

 cond ; the second rather longer than the fifth ; the third 

 and fourth nearly equal in length, and the longest in the 

 wing. The wings of the bird killed in autumn are seldom 

 perfect, as this is the season for moulting the flight fea- 

 thers. 



The female is smaller than the male, and is pure white 

 in winter, like the male already described, except that she 

 has no short black feathers before or behind the eye. By 

 the end of April the female has assumed almost as much 

 mixture of feather, barred black and ochreous yellow, with 

 white tips, as the male bird has of those which are grey ; 

 a female bird from Scotland, bought in the London market 

 during the second week in May, 1839, is much farther 

 advanced, having the whole of the head, neck, back, rump, 

 upper tail-coverts, upper part of the breast and sides, 



