Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 531 



the normal manner. I have both seen and shot several old 

 Black Cock in full moult, whose power of flight did not 

 strike me as being much diminished ! and a young male in 

 my collection is casting its flight-feathers in pairs. 



Baron d'Hamonville suspects that Grebes also cast their 

 flight-feathers at oncCj and although I think it extremely 

 probable, I have no specimens to prove it. M. Gerbe noted 

 (Rev. et Mag. de Zool. 1875, p. 271) that the Puffin moulted 

 its wings from the end of March to beginning of May (many 

 specimens) ; but these, I think, can hardly be adult birds, 

 which, at the Faroes at any rate, regularly arrive at their 

 breeding-places on the clifi"s on or about April 14. M. Gerbe 

 recorded that Colymbus arcticus cast all its flight-feathers 

 simultaneously in April (single specimen) ; whether this be 

 normal I know not, but ail examples of C. septentrionalis 

 which I have seen, which were moulting their wings, were 

 doing so in November (see also Zool. 1869, p. 1500) ; how- 

 ever, Mr. Smalley records (Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist. 1909, 

 p. 141) that he has a flightless specimen of C. glacialis shot 

 on Feb. 18. 



To revert to the plumage of the Moorhen, there are one 

 or two small points in Mr. Grant's paper to which I 

 should like to refer, though with his main conclusions 

 I agree. Birds in what he calls second plumage (=lst 

 winter plumage) do not always have white throats or even 

 mottled throats ; thus one specimen in my collection (Oct. 

 10) has only the chin white, and in another (Nov. 18) 

 the chin and upper throat is only very faintly ticked with 

 greyish. The frontal shield in a bird in my collection, dated 

 November 1, is as large as that of an adult in January and is 

 dull red while its beak is dull red and dull yellow, and the 

 tibial band is slightly marked with red. I consider that 

 this bird is from an early brood. 



The size of the shield is, I think, largely seasonal, and 

 begins to increase in February ; I have such birds showing 

 a distinct demarcation between the old shield and the new 

 growth. At this time, too, the surface of the shield 



