322 THE WOODCOCK. 
or Northern Asiatic migrants of this species, we should get 
some large and heavy birds, and all our Indian-killed birds 
would not be so persistently small and light. Certainly, our 
Himalayan birds do run much smaller and lighter than British 
ones; but I am far from asserting that this could justify their 
separation, as a distinct species, as suggested by Hodgson. 
The Afghan birds are perhaps larger again. MHutton gives the 
length of one as 16 inches, and the weight 13 ozs. , 
The legs and feet are pale bluish, brown or drab, or fleshy 
plumbeous or grey, or livid grey, or bluish fleshy grey, gene- 
rally more or less shaded dusky on the joints, and the claws 
are fleshy brown, pale brown, blackish brown, or dusky. 
The irides are always dark brown, but in one cream coloured 
albino they were pale brownish red. 
The bill is dusky to blackish brown at tip; the rest pale 
drab brown, fleshy brown, fleshy brown with a bluish tinge, 
or almost plumbeous, often nearly white, or pale fleshy at 
the base of the lower mandible. 
THE PLATE is fairly good, but I do not think the legs are ever 
quite so pink as are represented ; thereis always a bluish or 
plumbeous or grey shade over them. The species isan ex- 
tremely variable one—some are much darker, some are almost 
white below,--some have a conspicuous blackish brown patch 
onthe upper throat, some have no trace of this; some are 
much redder, some much greyer above; some have the chin 
and upper throat quite white, in others it is a warm buff. In 
some the rump and upper tail-coverts are quite red, as shown 
in the plate, in others these parts are quite grey. 
Mr. Yarrell says :—‘ Males have the forehead more inclined to 
grey, with the chin white ; and the space above and below the 
decided dark brown mark from the beak to the eye much lighter 
in colour, almost white, with the small dark triangular specks, 
at the end of these light coloured feathers better defined; the 
back has more of the pale brown and grey, and the rump 
less red than the female.” 
Not one of these supposed sexual distinctions hold good in 
our Indian birds, nor do I even believe that they hold good in 
English ones, Anyhow, they certainly do not hold good in 
India. 
The absence or presence of triangular marks on the outer 
web of the first quill feather has also been supposed to have 
a sexual significance. But of this Yarrell says : —“ These marks 
are indications of youth rather than of sex, and are obliterated 
by degrees, and in succession from the base to the end of the 
feather.” | 
It is a curious thing that out of 27 Indian-killed specimens 
now before me, these triangular marks are present in every 
specimen. Only in two or three they have disappeared from 
