PASSES DOMESTICTJS. 601 



Adult male (Ceylon). Length 5-6 to 5-8 inches ; wing 2-95 to 3-1 ; tail 2-3 to 2-4; tarsus 0-65 to 07; middle toe 

 0-6, claw (straight) 0-19 ; bill to gape 0-52. 



Female. Length 5-6 inches ; wing 2-7 to 2-8 ; bill to gape 0-5 ; tail 2-1 to 2-2. 



Male. Iris olive-brown, greyish brown, or brown ; bill black ; legs and feet fleshy brown or reddish brown. Some 

 specimens hare the culmen abnormally ridged, and the contour of the bill varies somewhat in different individuals. 



Breeding-plumage. Centre of the forehead, crown, and nape ashy grey ; lores, upper part of cheeks and ear-coverts, 

 chin, down the centre of the throat, chest, and upper breast black ; this colour- extends more or less over the eye 

 (in some specimens hardly traceable) and also past the gape, uniting the black of the lores with that of the chin ; 

 cheeks, ear-coverts, and sides of throat just below the ears whitish, more or less faintly tinged with greyish, and 

 bounded beneath by the black of the chest, which spreads out ; a few white feathers occasionally above' the eye, 

 above which, extending down the sides of the nape upon the neck and uniting across the back of it, is a long 

 patch of deep chestnut ; lesser wing-coverts and upper part of back the same, the latter region striped broadly 

 with black ; median coverts deeply tipped with white, which is surmounted by a black patch on the inner webs 

 of the feathers ; greater coverts and tertials black, at the centres of the feathers broad margins of chestnut- 

 brown ; primaries and secondaries dark brown ; primary-coverts blackish brown ; the whole narrowly edo-ed with 

 fulvous, which encroaches on the web just beyond the primary-coverts, and also near the centre of the longer 

 primaries, forming two patches on the closed wing ; lower back and rump brownish grey, marked generally on 

 the rump with fulvous ; tail greyish brown, the feathers finely margined with tawny grey ; beneath from the 

 breast to under tail-coverts impure white, darkened with greyish on the flanks ; shafts of the under tail-coverts 

 dark ; under wing whitish, the edge marked with black. 



Winter plumage. After the autumnal moult the black throat-feathers are tipped with white, deeply on the chest and 

 narrowly on the throat ; the upper-surface feathers are tipped with yellowish brown, giving a tawny appearance 

 to the head, and almost obscuring the chestnut of the hind neck ; the greater wing-coverts and tertials are much 

 more deeply edged with chestnut of a more fulvous hue than the breeding-colour. The chestnut patch just 

 behind the eye is less obscured than other parts, but even there the feathers are tipped with fulvous. 



As the breeding- season approaches these margins wear off and leave the black and chestnut pure, but at the lower 

 part of the chest where they are deep they mostly do not quite disappear. 



Female. Iris brownish olive ; bill olive-brown ; margin and base of tarsus fleshy ; legs and feet fleshy. 



Head, hind neck, and lower back greyish brown, with often a tawny tinge ; back striped with black on one web of 

 the feathers as in the male, the other webs being dusky tawny ; wings brown, with the markings distributed as 

 in the male, but of an obscure tawny colour, the white tips of the median coverts not so deep ; tail pale brown : 

 a buff-white stripe above and behind the eye, between which and the ear-coverts there is a brown stripe ; ear- 

 coverts grey ; chin and throat sullied white; under surface whitish, washed with grey on the chest and the 

 flanks ; feathers at the sides of the breast with dusky shafts, under tail-coverts with blackish ones. 



Young. Iris dark olive-brown. Above greyish brown, obscurely banded on the head, hind neck, and rump with a 

 darker shade ; the interscapular feathers fulvous, the inner webs blackish ; wing-coverts and tertials tipped and 

 broadly margined with buff-white, above which the web is blackish ; secondaries very broadly edged with butty ; 

 tail very pale brown ; eye-stripe aud ear-coverts as in the adult female ; cheeks faintly barred with brownish : 

 chin and throat pale isabelline grey ; under surface whitish, tinged with buff. 



Obs. The Ceylon House-Sparrow belongs to that normally somewhat smaller and, as regards the female, sli 

 . differently coloured race which inhabits India, and which has been separated by Jardine as P. indicus. Seeing; 

 however, that the Sparrow has evidently, from the region in which the species was first installed by a creative Pro- 

 vidence, followed the march of those classes of the human race which dwell in permanent habitations, it cannot 

 have been otherwise as regards India, if, indeed, it was not there that it was originally located. It has been found to 

 vary in size and coloration in certain districts which it has perhaps, at no very remote period, invaded. Mr. 

 Seebohm remarks on the extremely bright colouring of the males he procured on the Lower Petchora, in Northern 

 Eussia, as compared with any thing he has seen ; the Sparrow, therefore, in that region might be said to constitute 

 a local race. In Siberia (whither, according to Professor Newton, it has wandered since the Eussian conquest) 

 it occasionally attains a very large size : an example from Krasnoyarsk measures 3-25 inches in the wing, showing 

 that the climate of that region is conducive to robustness. I contend, therefore, that the difference in size of 



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