MERGUS SERRATOR. 271 



the base of the throat and ou the crop, the grey -brown bases 

 of the feathers show through to a certain exteut like hidden 

 bars, and the sides of the breast and body and flanks are brown 

 of the same peculiar greenish or ashy shade (though rather 

 purer in tint) as the upper surface. The entire interscapular/ 

 region, mantle, lower back, rump and upper tail-coverts, brown, 

 with, to my eyes, a sort of greenish tinge, or some would call 

 it ashy, most of the feathers paling towards the margins. 

 The quills are dusky, almost blackish ; the secondaries and 

 their greater coverts black, all but the first three broadly- 

 tipped with white, but leaving a portion of the black bases of 

 the secondaries visible below the white tips of the coverts, 

 thus forming a more or less conspicuous, though posteriorly- 

 narrow, black band across the white wing patch. There is 

 a second upper black band as in the male, but as the lesser 

 and median coverts in the female are dusky ash, it is hardly 

 noticed. 



The tertiaries blackish dusky, paling anteriorly, whitish to- 

 wards the tip, and the innermost one mostly white with a 

 black outer margin. The tail feathers are much the same 

 colour as the back. 



Both sexes, as will have been gathered from the above des- 

 cription, resemble those of the Goosander, but may be distin- 

 guished by their smaller size, and bills much thinner in pro- 

 portion to their length, especially at the base. 



The adult males, moreover, are at once to be recognized by 

 the conspicuous light brownish rufous baud round the base of 

 the neck, narrow behind, broading out in front into a crop 

 patch, which band is everywhere adorned by black streaks; 

 by a narrow black baud stretching down the back of the neck, 

 a greater length of which is white than in the Goosander ; 

 by the flanks (pure white in this latter) strongly vermiculated 

 with greyish black in the present species, and by the much 

 longer and differently-shaped crest and other minor differ- 

 ences. 



But we are very unlikely to get adult males in this country, 

 and the young and females far more closely resemble those of 

 the Goosauder. 



They may, however, be distinguished by their smaller size 

 (they weigh about two-thirds of what the others do) and differ- 

 ently shaped bills ; by their browner crowns and crests ; by 

 their entire upper surface being a tolerably dark brown, or ashy 

 brown, or dusky slaty with a brownish or greenish tinge 

 instead of the clear light blue grey of the Goosander ; and by 

 the white wing patch composed of the terminal portions of 

 the secondaries and their greater coverts, which in the Goosan- 

 der forms a single patch ; but in the present species, (the tips 



35 



