400 THE SNIPE-BILLED GODWIT. 
papilla* ; the tongue is long, simple, sharp-pointed and mem- 
braneous towards the tip. 
The lower wing-coverts are much developed, the greater 
ones of the hinder secondaries being almost as long as the 
quiils themselves. 
There is a conspicuous dark line from the eye to the nostrils ; 
a broad, not very regular dull white, or brownish white, band 
above this line, extending backwards, diminished in breadth, 
as a supercilium ; the chin, cheeks, throat, and front and sides 
of neck are white, with a brownish tinge, thickly streaked, 
longitudinally, with little brown lines, short and more or less 
speck-like about the chin, throat and face, longer, broader, 
more pronounced, lower down; the few last feathers at the 
base of the neck, on the sides, and at front, with traces of 
arrow-head, subterminal brown bars ; the feathers at the extreme 
sides of the breast with these well marked. 
The breast, abdomen, sides, flanks, vent, lower tail-coverts, 
tibial plumes, axillaries, and wing-lining, in some specimens 
all pure white and unmarked, in others with a few spots, traces 
of obsolete bars, on some of the feathers of the sides, flanks 
and lower tail-coverts. 
The variation in the amount of barring at the base of the 
neck, on the extreme sides of the breast and elsewhere, is 
probably seasonal. 
The lesser lower coverts everywhere just inside the edge 
of the wing, brown centred. | 
The forehead between the dull white bands, the crown and 
occiput, moderately dark, slightly sooty brown, with just a 
trace of paler margins to the feathers. 
The nape, back of neck, and interscapulary region similar, 
but the brown somewhat lighter, and the pale brown margins 
to the feathers more conspicuous; the scapulars similar, but 
most of them rather darker ; the lesser wing-coverts generally 
decidedly darker, with the pale margins obsolete or nearly so, 
while in the median coverts these are more conspicuous and 
white or albescent; the winglet and primary greater coverts 
very dark brown ; the coverts, more especially the hinder ones, 
tipped white ; the rest of the greater coverts a lighter brown, 
often greyer, tipped, margined, and more or less imperfectly 
barred towards the tips with pure white, most conspicuously so 
on the inner webs; the earliest primaries deep brown, grow- 
ing less deep as they recede towards the secondaries, which are 
arather light, in some birds decidedly grey, brown; all the 
quills with much white and white mottling on the inner webs, 
the amount of which increases as the feathers recede from the 
outside of the wing; all but the first five or six primaries 
more or less conspicuously margined, often in a mottled fashion, 
* This also characterizes Pseudototanus haughtont, 
