35 [Vol. xxv. 



of the feathers have been indicated as diagnostic, but all 

 these I have proved to be absolutely valueless. 



" In 1873 Gould (cf. ' Birds of Great Britain/ iv. p. 77) 

 expressed his views on the subject as follows : — 



' Some sportsmen assert that they can distinguish the 

 sexes by an examiuatioa of the outer primary, and affirm 

 that those birds which have the external margin of that 

 feather plain or devoid of tooth-like markings are males, and 

 those in which it exists are females. But they are absent in 

 both sexes of very old birds; for I have wings of females in 

 my collection in which the outer margin of the first primary 

 is totally devoid of the toothed character. When the young 

 Woodcock assumes his first primaries, which he does at the 

 age of two or three weeks, the outer feather is strongly 

 marked ; as he grows older this feature gradually disappears ; 

 and I have frequently seen specimens with the outer primary 

 toothed for half its length and the other part plain/ 



" It will thus be seen that, though Gould did not believe 

 that there was any sexual distinction to be found in the 

 plumage, he implies that the Woodcocks with tooth-like 

 markings on the outer web of the first long flight-feather 

 are the young birds of the year ; that these tooth-like 

 markings gradually disappear with age — i. e. at the second 

 and subsequent autumn-moults, when the flight -feathers are 

 shed ; and that the birds with a narrow whitish-buff border 

 to the outer web of the first long flight-feather are ' very 

 old birds/ more than two years old. 



" This statement has been generally accepted as correct 

 and has been copied and recopied by various authors, even by 

 that most careful writer Howard Saunders, who in 1899 

 writes as follows (Man. Brit. B. p. 570) : — ' In the young 

 bird the outer webs of all the primaries show distinct fulvous 

 notches ; in the adult there are hardly any such markings on 

 the 1st and 2nd webs/ 



"The investigations which I have undertaken during the 

 last few years have clearly proved the entire fallacy of this 

 theory. 



" On the higher parts of the islands of the Azores the 

 Woodcock is a very common bird, and during- the five 



