SHARP-TAILED GROUSE. 385 
States territory, is a female in the autumnal dress, and was 
brought from the Rocky Mountains. We think proper to in- 
sert here in detail the description we took from it at the time, 
thus enabling the reader to contrast it with that made from a 
northern specimen in spring plumage, rather than point out 
each and all of the numerous, and at the same time minute 
and unimportant variations. 
The female represented in the figure was fifteen inches long ; 
its general colour mottled with black and yellowish rufous; 
the feathers of the head above are yellowish rufous banded 
with black, the shaft yellowish; a line above the eye, the 
cheeks and the throat, are pure yellowish rusty, with very 
few blackish dots, and a band of the latter colour from the 
bill beneath the eye, and spreading behind; all the lower 
parts are whitish cream, with a yellowish rusty tinge ; each 
feather of the neck and breast, with a broad blackish sub- 
terminal margin, in the shape of a crescent, becoming more 
and more narrow and acute as they are lower down on the 
belly, until the lowest are reduced to a mere black mark in 
the middle; the lower tail-coverts and the femorals are en- 
tirely destitute of black. All the upper parts, viz., the back, 
rump, upper tail-coverts, and scapulars, have a uniform mottled 
appearance of black and rusty, each feather being black, with 
rusty shafts, spots, bands, or margins, the rusty again minutely 
dotted with black ; on the rump, but especially on the tail- 
coverts, the rusty predominates in such a manner that each 
feather becomes first banded with black and rusty, then 
decidedly rusty varied with black, which, however, does not 
change in the least the general effect. The wing-coverts are 
dusky, each with a large round white spot at tip, the inner 
eradually taking the markings of the back and scapulars ; 
the linmg of the shoulder is plain dusky, as well as the 
spurious wing and the primaries, each feather of the spurious 
wing having about five large round spots of white on its outer 
web ; the primaries are regularly marked on the same side with 
eight or ten squarish, equi-distant, white spots, with a few in- 
VOL, III. 2B 
