176 Prof. C. O. Whitman,


-Cape Dove does not confirm this anticipation. "The wing-

coverts," as he reports, " are greyish-brown with blackish bands

and whitish buff apical spots."


According to Dr. Butler (Avic. Mag., N. S., Vol. II., p. 101).

the young Tambourine Dove (Tympa?iistria tympanistrid) is

similarly marked : " All the feathers of the wing and tail are of

a bright coffee-brown color, with broad subterminal irregular

transverse black bands." The figure given in a later volume of

the same magazine (Vol. IV., p. 308), makes it clear that the

young Tambourine rises to a stage of irregular cross-bars analo-

gous to what is seen in the young Inca Doves (Scardafella inca)

and Geopelias, in which we find the feathers edged apically with

a pale straw-color (very narrow in Inca but conspicuous in Geop-

elias) followed within by a blackish crescentic bar, and then one

or more quite irregular pale buff 'bars' (too irregular to be

described as bars — mere suggestions of bars). In the mature

state, the pale apical bar is lost and the blackish crescentic bar

becomes terminal.


This form of barring (so far as the black crescent is con-

cerned), as I intend to make clear at another time, is something

later in evolution, than the lateral chequers of the Mourning

Dove, Passenger Pigeon etc. In young Geopelias we have

transient lateral chequers in the tertials and longer wing-coverts,

and in such continuity with the black crescents that the latter

must be regarded as derived from the former. Even in domestic

pigeons we frequently see chequers reduced to black crescents.


In the young Inca Doves, these same transient chequers

are recapitulated on the tertials and the long coverts. Although

-not so black as in the Geopelias, they are yet plain and un-

mistakable homologues. Only two or three of the inner long

coverts have this vanishing chequer as a long lateral streak on

both the inner and the outer edge of the feather. On the remaining

feathers of the row the mark appears only on the outer web, and

becomes weaker and narrower as we descend the row, until on

the outer two feathers it is wholly lost. The recapitulation of

these marks in the Inca and its South American allies, and again

in all the Geopelias of Australia, even in the Diamond Dove,

standing at the extreme upper limit of evolution thus far reached



