6 R. W. SHurELDT, 
Jong; with the tarsi reticulate. In plumage the sexes are practi- 
cally alike. 
In all, the eyes are of some shade of brown or hazel, while 
the feet may be black, plumbeous, or very light flesh color or 
pinkish. The bill may be black or very light, and marked in various 
ways. 
With respect to the plumage, the principal cofan are black, 
white, various shades of brown, rich chestnut, rusty, tawny, rufous, 
gray, etc. Sometimes the plumage areas may be very shatpid 
defined; while in some species the feathers may be dotted, or trans- 
versely banded, etc. or finely streaked, as on the neck of D. bicolor. 
Often there is a dark brown median stripe on the crown, which 
extends down on the neck behind. Generally, the nostrils are small 
and oval and situated in the basal half of the mandible. 
As a rule, their wings are rounded and very ample. They nest 
in trees, and have peculiarities with respect to nidification. Their 
bills vary somewhat in form, but they are accurately outlined here 
in Plates 1 and 2, as I first photographed them all natural size, 
and from these photograplıs outlined the bills as shown in the Plates. 
Upon the whole, the mandibles throughout the genus Dendro- 
cygna are, morphologically, more like those structures as found among 
the Anatinae than they resemble the bills of any of the Geese 
proper. This is equally true of the general forms of these birds; 
in their general aspect they look a great deal more like ducks than 
they look like any of the true Anserinae. 
Although the sexes are alike — or very probably alike — ın 
Dendrocygna, the great variation of the plumage in them is more 
like the Anatinae and most Fuligulinae than is the case 
with typical Geese where black, white, and the grays prevail. It is 
to be noted, too, that in Dendrocygna autumnalis there is a large, 
white speculum on the wing, which again is a duck character, being 
found both in the Anatinae and Fuligulinae. 
Dendrocygna may nest on the ground, as well äs in the hollows 
of trees (D. bicolor); Aix among the Anatinae also nests in trees, 
and there is considerable variation in this. respect among certain 
birds which we have arrayed among the Anserinae. 
As a matter of fact — and so far as I am aware — the character 
which has led many avian systematists to relegate Dendrocygna to & 
place among the Anserinae, removing it from the nearer vieinity 
of the Sheldrake group, has been the reticulated tarsi found in all 
