Vot. II, Pr. II] LOOMIS—A REVIEW OF THE TUBINARES 111 
The precise nature of the double coloration in this species is 
not positively determinable from the material at hand. How- 
ever, the burden of proof lies with age and geographic varia- 
tion, not with dichromatism, a dominant condition in some 
Tubinares. Transitional specimens showing the passage from 
the natal down to the definitive feathers would reveal the whole 
matter at a glance, settling it beyond a peradventure. 
In fresh plumage, the interscapulars, scapulars, and inner 
secondaries are usually washed with gray and margined with 
grayish white, the latter producing a decided scaled appear- 
ance. In the extreme dark birds the margins incline to pale 
brown or brownish white. Fresh primaries and rectrices are 
sometimes heavily frosted with gray, rendering their black 
shafts very conspicuous. Gray and grayish white filoplumes 
occur in numerous specimens on the pileum and auriculars, and 
less frequently on the cervix. No. 9308 C. A. S. has thirteen 
fully developed rectrices, six on the right side and seven 
crowded ones on the left. 
The Academy’s series of one hundred and thirty-eight speci- 
mens, obtained north of the Tropic of Cancer, is distributed 
throughout the year as follows: February 27, four specimens; 
April 25 and 29, nine; May, twenty; June, thirty-three; July, 
twenty ; August, eight; September, thirteen ; October, gene 
November, nine; December, two. 
The four specimens of February 27 are in process of a com- 
plete moult, apparently postnuptial. In two of them, it affects 
the head and body generally and the upper and lower tail- 
coverts, but does not involve the primaries and wing-coverts, 
which are old and worn. The replacement of a middle and a 
lateral rectrix in one of the specimens appears to be normal 
renewal. The two remaining specimens (both in poor feather ) 
are sprouting the inner primaries and greater and lesser wing- 
coverts as well as renewing the plumage of the head and body 
and the lower tail-coverts. 
In the birds of April 25 and 29 (all in worn plumage) the 
moult has made but relatively little headway; in only one ex- 
ample has it reached the inner primaries. Probably the April 
birds were later breeders and later migrants than the February 
ones and therefore later in their moulting. 
