The Zoologist— July, 1870. 2207 



the eye, and a third from the posterior canthus of the eye backwards 

 over the auricular region and side of the neck ; though the first and 

 last sets may appear more or less directly continuous with each other. 

 It is possible that the plumage described above may not be the most 

 perfect one, still the perfect development of the crest and other orna- 

 ments warrants the behef that the bird from which it was taken is 

 an adult. Authors speak of the under parts, particularly the abdomen, 

 as being frequently nearly white, which may be the coloration of 

 those parts in very mature or very old birds. 



At present writing only one perfect specimen of this species is 

 known to exist in any American Museum. The Boston Natural 

 History Society possess this one ; No. 9209 of the Museum Register, 

 No. 8135 of the Fresnaye collection, now owned by the Society. The 

 Smithsonian Institution has a mutilated specimen (a head only), from 

 the north-west coast of America, presented by Mr. John Gould : as far 

 as can be judged, it belongs to a bird rather more perfectly plumaged 

 than the Boston Society's specimen. 



Sitnorhynchus tetraculus (Pall.), Coues.— Habitat : Asiatic (and 

 American ?) coasts of the North Pacific. " In mari orientali, prsesertim 

 Unalaschka" (Pallas). Kamtschatka (Mus. Acad., Philada., and Mus. 

 Smiths. Inst.) Bay of Yedo, Japan (Mus. Smiths. Inst.) 



Bill small, short, much compressed, regularly conical from a lateral 

 view, simple, being without decided sulci, ridges, caruncles or other 

 irregularities of surface of any sort; culmen narrow, regularly mode- 

 rately convex from base to tip; commissure and gonys perfectly 

 straight in their whole length ; the tip of the bill turned neither up 

 nor down, but the points of both mandibles almost meeting on the 

 level of the commissure. Nasal fossae scarcely discernible as such, 

 the upper border of the small, basal, linear nostrils being flush with 

 the rest of the bill. Frontal feathers extend forward with an obtusely 

 rounded outline on the culmen, then rapidly recede backwards as they 

 pass downward in a straight line just past the posterior end of the 

 nostrils to the commissural edge of the upper mandible ; those on the 

 side of the lower mandible extending not quite so far, but the inter- 

 ramal space fully feathered. Wings rather longer than usual in this 

 group ; legs, feet and tail as in other species of the genus, the legs 

 perhaps a little longer, comparatively, than in other species. A crest 

 of ten or more slender elongated feathers with loosened fibrillse 

 springs from the middle of the forehead, just before the eyes, and 

 curves forward in the greater part of a circle to near the tip of the bill. 



