THE RUFF. 233 



apparently in equally good health ; it is only less variable in this respect than 

 in the colour of the plumage aud legs. When visiting the Zoological Gardens, 

 Regent's Park, London, in the spring of 1833 or 1834, I was informed by James 

 Hunt, one of the keepers, that a bird which had been there for two or three years, 

 had a different coloured ruff each summer. This is probably the same bird alluded 

 to by Mr. Yarrell.* Mr. R. Ball has observed the same fact in the Zoological 

 Gardens, Dublin, with respect to a ruff which was received there in full plumage, 

 and has twice changed since ; the colour being very different each time. Montagu 

 states, on the contrary, that those which came under his observation had, annually, 

 the same coloured ruff : it would thus seem that even in this adornment of the nuptial 

 season individuals are not constant. 



The two birds noticed as shot at Belfast Bay, in September 1844, I saw and ob- 

 tained some time afterwards. Their sex had not been noted by the preserver. They 

 are both of full adult size, though young birds of the year, — if " the fore part of the 

 neck and breast of a dull reddish ash" be characteristic of that age. Temminck 

 gives, as a diagnostic character, what is also copied as such in ' Jenyns's Manual,' — 

 " the two middle [tail] feathers barred ; the three outer ones at each side always of 

 one colour." In one of these specimens all the tail-feathers are barred ; but the 

 barring gradually diminishes from the central to the outer feathers ; the outside one has 

 one bar ; the next, two bars ; next, three, &c. In the other specimen, the three outer 

 feathers have each one blackish band at the tip, the extreme edge of which is nar- 

 rowly margined with reddish-white : such are the only markings of these feathers, 

 as elsewhere they are plain-coloured. An adult male (shot in the middle of Septem- 

 ber) that I examined, has, at the end of the two middle tail-feathers, an obscure 

 blackish band. The outside feather at one side of the tail has one blackish band, 

 the next two bands, the third three, all well marked ; but the opposite side of the 

 tail in this same individual (which is in the collection at the Belfast Museum) does 

 not correspond. It seems to me vain to describe any marking as permanently 

 characteristic of this species. 



When visiting Holland at the beginning of June 1826, I had 

 an opportunity of seeing ruffs in their halcyon abode — the fens 

 of that country, where they were abundant, and quite regardless 

 of persons walking within a few yards' distance. A group of 

 them, stationed on a grassy bank close to a road crossing a fen 

 between Utrecht and Gorcuin, not only evinced no shyness, but 

 gazed with the greatest nonchalance on the passers-by : their 

 tameness of course arising from their being unmolested. On 

 passing through the Pontine marshes, lying between Rome and 

 Terracina, about the middle of the following month of August, 



* Brit. Birds, vol. ii. p. 582. 



