23 [Vol. xxviT. 



did not necessarily imply that the bird was adult, the eye 

 becoming green at the end of the first year. With this 

 statement other Members of the Club had disagreed, and were 

 inclined to follow Mr. Frohawk in believing that the 

 bird in question represented an abnormal variety. There was, 

 however, nothing abnormal in the bird^s plumage, and it was 

 undoubtedly a young bird about a jear old, which had not 

 yet begun to moult the feathers of its breast, though many 

 of the feathers of the upperparts, including the middle pairs 

 of tail-feathers, were in course of moult. ]t had been stated 

 that the white feathers on the breast and belly of this bird 

 were mostly new, but a closer examination showed that this 

 was not really the case. 



Although he could not agree with Mr. Frohawk's con- 

 clusions, he thought the Members of the Club ought to be 

 much obliged to that gentleman for calling attention to this 

 stage of plumage ; and as the changes of plumage in the 

 Cormorant appeared to be imperfectly understood by many 

 ornithologists, he had been at some pains to obtain additional 

 examples of young birds from Scotland during October, while 

 Mr. W. P. Pycraft and Mr. H. E. Howard had also procured 

 some extremely instructive specimens from Donegal in the 

 month of August. 



The changes of plumage might be briefly summarized as 

 follows : — 



1st Year. — The series exhibited commenced with two young 

 birds taken from the same nest on the 9th and 18th of August 

 respectively. The younger was entirely clad in sooty- brown 

 down, but in the older bird the quills of the wings and tail 

 were partially grown and on the breast and belly many pure 

 white feathers were to be found making their appearance 

 among the dark down. From the same colony in Donegal 

 three fully feathered young birds were also obtained, birds 

 which had, no doubt, been hatched a month or two earlier 

 than the downy young already referred to. These varied 

 somewhat as to the amount of white on the breast and belly, 

 ■and in the darkest of the three only the middle of the under- 

 parts was white, the dark feathers on the sides and flanks 



