THE PAINTED SNIPE. 391 
smmature bird of etther sex, and the description of his female ts 
that of a mature bird of either sex.” , 
This determined me to look into the question myself, and I 
shot and bought and dissected over 100 birds. Of these, nearly 
fifty were in the plumage depicted in the left hand figure; 
every one of these proved to be, without exception, females. 
In this enormous number of birds, examined between the Ist 
November and ist April, not one single bird in this plumage 
was a male, 
Moreover, I found that (I speak of birds sexed by dissection) 
in the females the wings varied from 5:25 to 5°6, and the bills 
at front from 1°8 to 2°05, while in the males the wings varied 
from 4’9 to 5°2, and the bills from 1°65 to 1°85, and out of all the 
birds examined, in what had thus been proved to be the adult 
female plumage, only one single specimen, but what would have 
been recognized to be a female merely by its dimensions. This 
one, a female by dissection, with comparatively large eggs in 
the ovary, and in the full female plumage, had a wing of only 
5°03 and a bill at front of only 1°73. It was in fact a dwarf 
female, a female by dissection, a female in plumage, but of 
dimensions rather less than those of an average male. It has 
occurred to me that similar dwarf females may have led Schlegel, 
Tickell and others into the error above referred to, 
One thing is certain—besides the large series of this bird 
examined and sexed specially for this enquiry, I possess twenty- 
three specimens sexed at other times by myself and others in 
the adult female plumage. Every one of these has been sexed 
female by dissection. This makes seventy birds in which the 
plumage, attributed by Jerdon to the adult female, has proved 
on dissection to pertain to that sex, without onze single instance 
in which it has proved on dissection to pertain to the male. 
To me this seems to prove the rule, but there may be excep- 
tions. It seems to me fosszb/e that, as in many species females 
with diseased ovaries assume a guasz-male plumage, so in this 
species, in which ordinary sexual relations are reversed, males 
with diseased generative organs may assume a guasi-female 
plumage. I hope every one will try whether it is possible to 
find a single male in the plumage depicted in the left hand figure 
of the plate, and if they ever find such, examine carefully the 
generative organs and preserve the specimen, so that we may see 
whether in such exceptional cases the identical plumage of the 
female is assumed, or only something approaching or mimick- 
ing it. 
“The young of both sexes resemble the male, 2.2, the plumage 
depicted in the right hand figure, but the young females soon 
begin to show signs of the adult plumage; they get the dark 
pectoral band more strongly marked, and the wing-coverts 
begin to show the green, crossed by narrow, dark, transverse bars 
characteristic of the adult female garb, 
