340 
DE. E. W. SHUFELDT’s MOEPHOLOGICAL 
Commencing with the pterylosis of the head, I find in A. voci- 
ferus the same character which Nitzsch points out for the 
European Whip-poor-will (see PI. XVIII. figs. 9 and 10 of this 
paper), and that is, on its superior aspect there is a triangular 
patch filling in the space just posterior to the superior mandible. 
Behind this the feathers form a median longitudinal tract of 
some width, which, extending down the back of the neck, as the 
dorso-cervical tract, forks between the shoulder-blades. Between 
this median tract on the top of the head and within the superior 
eyelid, on either side, we find a double longitudinal tract of 
contour feathers which join those in front, and posteriorly unite 
with the pterylosis of the inferior aspect of the head or the 
throat. Apteria occupy the interspaces among these supra- 
capital, longitudinal pterylse on the head of this Whip-poor-will, 
and as a distinctive feature it is even better marked in our speci- 
men of Chordeiles. 
It will be remembered that X itzsch figured this character for 
Caprimulgus europceus and Nyctornis grandis , while he states in 
the text that he compared these two forms with C. longipennis, 
C. forcipatus , and G. psalurus. He also examined pterygraphi- 
cally JEgotheles No v a- II oil an dice, Podargus gigas , and Nyctornis 
cetlier eus. 
On the throat of the Common American Whip-poor-will the 
feathers are arranged in fairly well-defined, longitudinal rows, 
and Nitzsch found this to be characteristic also of the European 
bird ; but in Chordeiles these rows are not very easily made out, 
if the throat-feathers are inserted upon any definite arrangement, 
and I am inclined to believe that in this latter form this is not 
the case. 
Anteriorly the cervical region is densely feathered in both 
Antrostomus and Chordeiles, the tract extending to the points 
opposite the clavicular heads of the os furcula, laterally ; while 
mesially an aptera occurs of no great extent between the forks 
of the bone just alluded to (fig. 9). 
Nitzsch found a different state of things in this region in the 
European Nightjar, for he draws the entire antero-cervical space 
without feathers, which reduces the neck-tracts to two longi- 
tudinal, lateral pterylae*, as shown in his figure of that bird. 
The superior mandibular bristles in the Whip-poor-will before 
me are conspicuously long, and are deeply inserted as a single 
* “Feather-tracts,” from nrepov ancl v\ij. 
