654 SCOLOPACHLE. 



tubercles on the face never appeared; A young male that 

 was taken destitute of a ruff in the breeding-season, whose 

 plumage was mostly cinereous, except about the head and 

 neck, put on the ruff in confinement the next spring for the 

 first time, which was large, and the feathers were a mixture 

 of white and chestnut ; the scapulars and breast also 

 marked with chestnut ; and in the succeeding autumnal 

 moulting he reassumed his former cinereous plumage."" 



In a specimen, kept over two summers, at the Gardens of 

 the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park, the moulting 

 of the ruff commenced on the head and neck, about the 

 29th of March 1832 ; the feathers on the body were not 

 thrown off ; the head and neck were left destitute of plum- 

 age, but the feathers of the body remained in a perfect 

 state. The new ruff and head feathers appeared almost 

 immediately, and were perfected by the fourth of May. 

 This bird began to shed his ruff feathers on the 8th of June, 

 and by the 6th of July he had lost them all. The feathers 

 that formed the ruff round the neck of this same bird*in the 

 spring of 1831, were ash coloured; but the feathers 

 that ornamented the same part during the spring of 1832 

 were decidedly black. 



A female, killed at the end of April, from which the re- 

 presentation was taken, had the beak one inch and one- 

 quarter in length, dark brown at the point, but lighter in 

 colour at the base ; irides dusky brown ; head and neck, 

 ash-brown, the centre of each of the small feathers darker 

 than the margin, producing a spotted appearance ; scapu- 

 lars, back, wing-coverts and tertials, nearly black, with 

 broad ash-brown margins ; some of the great wing-coverts 

 and tertials, barred transversely with pale reddish brown ; 

 primaries dull black, with white shafts ; secondaries edged 

 with pale brownish white ; rump, and upper tail-coverts 



