GOLDENEYES AND PTARMIGAN OF ICELAND. 423 



unhesitating and unanimous, that they were quite familiar with 

 the one (islandica), but the other they had never seen there. 



It is sometimes asked, "What is a Grouse, and what is a 

 Ptarmigan ?" I should be inclined to divide the genus Lagopus 

 roughly into two groups, in order to answer that question:— 

 first, the Grouse, which "beck," as our Red Grouse and the 

 Willow Grouse do; secondly, the Ptarmigan, which grunt or 

 croak. This difference, which is striking enough to one 

 acquainted with the various species out of doors, is not the only 

 one; the Grouse, as before mentioned, have the fifth primary 

 longer than the second ; the Ptarmigan, as above, have the fifth 

 shorter— at least this is the case in L. mutus, the Common Ptar- 

 migan, and L. rupestris, the Rock Ptarmigan ; whether it holds 

 good in L. hemileucurus of Spitzbergen, and L. leucurus, Sw., of 

 N.W. America, I am unable to say, but should be glad to learn 

 as to the Lagopus collected in the Kurile Islands ; examination of 

 my only specimen (in winter dress) shows that the second and 

 fifth primaries are equal in length, but this may only mean that 

 its wing- quills were in this case not fully developed. 



Although it is possible to separate L. albus, the Willow Grouse, 

 in winter dress from L. mutus or L. rupestris, by examination of 

 the primaries, I cannot find any constant character by which to 

 separate the two latter, though they are distinct enough in 

 summer or autumn plumage. But whilst examining my series 

 of L. rupestris in winter dress, I hit upon a somewhat interesting 

 peculiarity, which I do not remember seeing mentioned anywhere. 

 Of my twenty-two winter examples, twenty are males, and I was 

 struck with the manner in which the black lore varies in 

 different birds. Some have merely a small black spot imme- 

 diately in front of the eye, and another at the base of the upper 

 mandible, with one-fifth of an inch of plain white intervening 

 between them ; these I take to be young birds. Others have a 

 broad loral band reaching from in front of the nostrils, over the 

 eye, into the auriculars, and also a small stripe of black feathers 

 on the lower mandible. I am inclined to believe that the extent 

 of the black loral patch depends upon, and increases with, the 

 age. I found a few odd feathers of the autumn plumage still 

 remaining on the neck and back; about half of these, in the 

 supposed younger birds, are ordinary male feathers, and the rest 

 are feathers like those of the female— in other words, the remains 



