294 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



his possession, while fig. 3 is in the Booth Museum, in the Dyke 

 Koad, and was shot, as I find from the late Mr. Booth's note- 

 books, to which I have been allowed access, on Jan. 10th, 1881. 

 The yellow is continued to the extremity of the mandible in 

 No. 3, and was so when the bird was shot, any colour afterwards 

 put on being applied in correct imitation of the beak in life : its 

 plumage is a little pied with white feathers on the fore-neck, and 

 this may indicate that the bird was in a morbid state. I presume 

 it to be the second of the five described by Mr. Booth in the third 

 volume of his * Eough Notes on British Birds,' though the 

 date is not given. There is one in the Norwich Museum with 

 a similarly coloured beak, and the bird figured by Yarrell, which 

 has done duty in four editions of his work, as well as in 

 Mr. Saunders' ■ Manual,' is rather like it. 



Fig. 4 was shot by Mr. Herbert Langton from the rocks 

 between Brighton and Eottingdean, and is rather like Mr. Booth's, 

 but the yellow extends into a broader band as it nears the nail 

 or tip of the mandible. When first mounted the skin round 

 and above the nostrils, as well as the dividing line on the basal 

 knob, was observed by Mr. Langton to be reddish orange in colour, 

 denoting a vigorous bird, I presume, but the plumage was entirely 

 normal, as usual. Gould may possibly have had before him a 

 Scoter resembling Mr. Langton's ; but even then I cannot think 

 it is quite correctly represented, although I am aware of the great 

 pains taken by him in details. 



The extent of the yellow colour on the beak of the male 

 Scoter is of more importance than at first sight appears, because 

 the American and North Pacific 0. americana is only distin- 

 guishable from our bird by the amount of yellow on the upper 

 mandible. (See the coloured figure of the head and outlines of 

 beak in 'North American [Water] Birds,' vol. ii. p. 91.) I do 

 not mean to suggest that they are not distinct species, though 

 Mr. Seebohm does not accord it more than subspecific rank ; but 

 the way in which closely related forms will approximate is very 

 remarkable (cf. 'Ibis,' 1893, p. 346). 



Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the Raptores, and 

 Ducks may follow suit. In 0. americana, according to Mr. Trum- 

 bull, the yellow colour is not invariably co-extensive (' The Auk,' 

 1892, p. 154), which shows it is not a very reliable character, and 

 he also points out how some previous authors have misdescribed it. 



