202 THE WIGEON, 
Females—Length, 17°38 to 19:25; expanse, 31'5 to 340; 
wing, 9°3 to 10:25 tail from vent, 35 to 5:0 tarsus, 174 to 1G, 
bill from gape, 1°68 to 1°8; weight, 1 lb. 3 ozs., to 1 Ib. 12 ozs. 
(Note that only one female out of 27 exceeded 1 Ib. 9 ozs). 
The bill is a pale delicate greyish lavender or leaden, rarely 
a slatey blue, with the nostrils, tip of upper, and all but the 
basal portions of the rami of the lower mandible, black, and 
often with a narrow black line along the margins of the upper 
mandible also. Sometimes only the tip of the lower mandible 
is black, the rest the same blue as the upper one, but dingier, 
The irides vary from hazel to deep brown. 
The legs and feet vary much; they are (1) pale drab brown 
with a faint olive tinge, (2) greyish or brownish olive, (3) dusky 
olivaceous, (4) dusky leaden, (5) plumbeous, (6) plumbeous with ~ 
an olive tinge, (7) light plumbeous; in all cases the webs are 
dusky, occasionally almost black, and very often, whatever the 
colour of the tarsi and toes, they have a dusky shade over the 
joints. 
— —_— 
THE PLATE is good, but the under surfaces of both birds, and 
the entire shoulder of the male’s wing should be of a far purer 
white. Moreover it is only just as they leave us that the breasts 
of the males are zearly as rich a vinaceous pink as is depicted 
in the plate, (it is never, I think, guzte so rich as this). Through- 
out the cold season the pink is shaded with grey, the result 
of greyish white tippings to all the feathers, which disappear 
(wear off I think) just as the breeding season approaches. 
The female, what is shown of her, though rather coarsely 
drawn, may pass. She can always be distinguished from other 
ducks by her tiny blue, black-tipped bill. 
In the males there is generally a conspicuous, broad, more or 
less speckly, black band, down the middle of the throat, some- 
times extending down the whole front of the neck ; but I have 
specimens, apparently otherwise in perfect plumage, showing 
only the barest trace of this. It is, I believe, the latest sign of 
complete maturity, the creamy buff patch on forehead and crown 
(it varies much in extent) being the last preceding one. 
Very beautiful and interesting specimens of young males are 
often procured, with the perfect plumage of the adult male, strug- 
eling through that of the female—all my specimens in this stage 
were procured between the 1oth November and the 20th 
December. But I have a specimen procured in January in 
which, while the plumage is in other respects perfect, a number 
of brown lunules yet linger amongst the pink of the breast. 
I have never seen a bird in India in the “ eclipse” stage; but 
it is well to note that “the adult male birds undergo consider- 
able change in their appearance towards the end of July and 
the beginning of August, becoming much more uniform in their 
