IN JERDON OR STRAY FEATHERS. 323 



(viz., the longer scapulars) more or less tipped with the rufous or 

 sandy colour of* the upper back, which colour, in some speci- 

 mens, more or less extends to the tips and outer webs of the 

 tertiaries. Lower back, rump, and upper tail-coverts the 

 same colour as the upper back, but of a considerably lighter 

 tint, in some mingled with brown, and in some altogether of 

 a pale pure . bay. The primaries and tail-feathers "are very 

 dark brown ; in some not so dark as the corresponding feathers 

 in G. himaUyensis, but in others of an intense chocolate brown. 

 Lower ^ parts a rich sandy or rufous fawn or even a deep bay, 

 (the tint varies in different stages of plumage) each feather 

 conspicuously paler shafted, and most of them (in the younger 

 birds) conspicuously, though narrowly, paler centred. The 

 lineated appearance of the lower parts alone at once distin- 

 guishes this species from the preceding one. — Hume, " Rough 

 Notes" 



3 ter.— Gyps himalayensis. Hume, " Kough Notes," 

 p. 12, February 1869. 



Length, 46 to 49 inches ; expanse, 106 to 110 inches ; wing, 



30 to 31 ; tail, 15 to 17; tarsus, 4 25 to 4-8; bill from gape, 



31 to 3-44 ; weight, 18 to 20 fts. 



The legs and feet are a dingy greenish grey or white ; the 

 claws pale brown ; the bill very pale horny green, dusky 

 just at tip ; cere rather pale brown ; skin of cheeks and chin 

 pale brownish grey, or dove colour, with a pure blue tinge 

 round the lower half of the eye. 



The adult bird has the whole head, cheeks, chin and throat 

 rather closely covered with yellowish white hair-like feathers ; 

 the nape and upper two-thirds of the back and sides of the 

 neck are somewhat thickly covered with yellowish white down ; 

 the basal one-third of the back and sides of the neck were bare 

 in all the specimens I have examined, and the front of the neck 

 sparsely studded with star-like tufts of down. The large crop- 

 patch, some 8 inches long by 6 inches in breadth, is denseTy cloth- 

 ed with small close-sitting pale wood brown feathers. At the 

 base of the back of the neck, rising in all the instances I have 

 seen out of the bare skin, is a ruff of linear lanceolate feathers, 

 about three inches in length, with very loose, separated, filament- 

 ous webs of dingy buffy white ; upper back, short scapulars 

 and wing-coverts, (except the larger row), a nearly uniform 

 pale brown, or whity brown, many of the feathers inconspi- 



