DUSKY GROUSE. 4 BUG, 
tip of the shaft, increasing in size as they are placed lower ; 
the belly feathers are plain dull cinereous, the lower tail-coverts 
are white, black at their base, with one or two black bands be- 
sides, and tinged between the bands with greyish ochreous ; 
the wings are nine and a half inches long, with the third and 
fifth primaries subequal ; the coverts, as well as the scapulars, 
are of the general colour, with about two bands, the second of 
which is sprinkled as well as the tip, each feather being white 
on the shaft at tip; the primaries, secondaries, and outer 
wing-coverts, including their shafts, are plain dusky; the 
secondaries have ochreous zigzag marks on their outer webs, 
and are slightly tipt with dull whitish ; the primaries them- 
selves are somewhat mottled with dingy white externally, 
but are notwithstanding entirely without the regular white 
spots so remarkable in other grouse; the lower wing-coverts 
and long axillary feathers are pure white. The tail measures 
in length seven and a half iaches, is very slightly rounded, of 
twenty broad feathers, of which the lateral are plain blackish, 
with the exception of a few whitish dots at the base of their 
outer webs, and the middle ones being varied with rufous dots 
disposed like the bands across their whole width ; all are thickly 
dotted with grey for half an inch at tip, which in the specimen 
figured, but by no means so much so in others, gives the tail 
an appearance of having a broad terminal band of cinereous 
sprinkled with blackish. This circumstance evinces the in- 
utility of describing with the extreme minuteness to which 
we have descended in this instance, as, after all the pains 
bestowed, the description is only that of an individual. The 
tail is pure black beneath, considerably paler at tip and on 
the undulations of the middle feathers. The tarsus is three- 
quarters of an inch long; the feathers with which it is covered, 
together with the femorals, are pale greyish ochreous, undu- 
lated with dusky ; the toes are dusky, and the nails blackish. 
The male is but little larger, and entirely, but not intensely, 
black. Wecan, however, say very little about it, having taken 
but a hasty and imperfect view of a specimen belonging to 
