8 LOUISIANA TANAGBR. 



as on the head-wear of fashionable ladies, who have degenerated into walking advertise- 

 ments of wretched taxidermy in their rage for barbaric ornamentation of their persons. 

 The style used to be to wear plumes selected either for their beauty of coloration or 

 their gracefulness of shape; but the itch of savagery has broken out with aggravated 

 symptoms, to be appeased with nothing short of an ornithological museum. I once 

 counted the feathers of no fewer than fifteen different kinds of birds on the dress of an 

 Indian squaw ; but then her alleged husband had one necklace of grizzly-bear claws and 

 another of human finger-tips; and circumstances alter cases, you know^. It seemed to 

 me less singular than the case of another w^oman w^hom I examined w^ith some care 

 shortly afterward, on whose bosom rested a gilt-tipped tiger 's-claw, from whose«ears 

 depended two claw^s of the same animal, in whose hair nested the greater part of the 

 external anatomy of the bird known as the Shite-poke, and to w^hose loins a live 

 poodle-dog was tied by a long blue string. Such a toilet, I think, w^ould be still more 

 effective with the rouge and Uly- white in streaks instead of layers, and a fish-bone 

 through the nose. ..." 



NAMES: Scarlet Tanager, Scarlet Sparrow (Edw.), Canada Tanager (Penn.), Red Tanager (Lath.J, 

 Scarlet Black- winged Tanager (Sw.), Black- winged Redbird. — Scharlachtangara, Tangara (German). — 

 Tangara &arlate (Le Moine), Cardinal de Canada, Tanagra du Canada (French). 



SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Tanagra rubra L. (1766). Pyranga rubra Vieill. (1807). PIRANGA ERYTHRO- 

 MBLAS Vieill. (1819). 



DESCRIPTION: Adult male: Glowing scarlet, with black wings and tail. Female: Above, clear olive- 

 green ; below, greenish-yellow ; wings and tail, dusky, edged with olive-green. Young males like the 

 female. They do not seem to obtain their full wedding dress before the third year, for we see many 

 males interminably variegated with colors of both sexes. 



Length, 7.25 inches; wing, 4.00; tail, 3.00 inches. ^ 



LOUISIANA TANAGER. 



Piranga ludoviciana Richardson. 



Plate XX. Fig. 3. 



5vF THIS beautiful bird Dr. Elliott Coues gives the following exceedingly interesting 

 description in his excellent work, "Birds of the Colorado Valley": 

 "Long before Nuttall and Townsend's journey to the Columbia had contributed so 

 many new species of birds to the respective publications of these authors and of Audu- 

 bon, the still more venturesome and memorable travels of Lewis and Clarke had resulted 

 in enriching Wilson's Ornithology with three remarkable novelties — Clarke's Crow, 

 Lewis' Woodpecker, and the Louisiana Tanager. These birds, Wilson says, 'were dis- 

 covered in the remote regions of Louisiana' ; that is, 'the extensive plains or prairies of 

 the Missouri, between the Osage and the Mandan nations,' and were given a 'distin- 



