LEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK, 333 
The female rose-breasted grosbeak is eight inches long, and 
twelve and a half inches in extent. The bill has not the form 
either of the typical grosbeaks or of the bullfinches, but is 
intermediate between them, though more compressed than 
either. It is three-quarters of an inch long, and much higher 
than broad ; instead of being pure white, as that of the male, 
it is dusky horn-colour above, and whitish beneath and on 
the margins; the irides are hazel brown; the crown is of a 
blackish-brown, each feather being skirted with lighter olive 
brown, and faintly spotted with white on the centre; from the 
nostrils a broad band passes over the eye, margining the crown 
to the neck ; a brown streak passes through the eye, and the 
inferior orbit is white; more of the brown arises from the 
angle of the mouth, spreading on the auriculars ; on the upper 
part of the neck above, the feathers are whitish, edged with 
pale flaxen, and with a broad, oblong, medial, blackish brown 
spot at tip; on the remaining part of the neck and inter- 
scapulars, this blackish spot is wider, so that the feathers 
are properly of that colour, broadly edged with pale flaxen ; 
the back and rump, and the upper tail-coverts, are of a lighter 
brown, with but a few merely indicated and lighter spots; the 
whole inferior surface of the bird is white, but not very pure ; 
the sides of the throat are dotted with dark brown, the dots 
occupying the tips of the feathers; the breast and flanks are 
somewhat tinged with flaxen (more dingy on the latter), and 
each feather being blackish along the middle at tip, those parts 
appear streaked with that colour; the middle of the throat, 
the belly, and under tail-coverts are unspotted ; the base of 
the plumage is everywhere plumbeous ; the wings are rounded, 
less than four inches long, entirely dusky brown, somewhat 
darker on the spurious wing, all the feathers, both quills and 
coverts, being lighter on their edges; the exterior webs of the 
middle and larger wing-coverts are whitish at tip, constituting 
two white bands across the wings ; the primaries are whitish 
at the origin beneath the spurious wing; the secondaries are 
inconspicuously whitish externally at tip, that nearest the body 
