332 
case, therefore, the numbers would seem to he naturally uneven, 
though not so observed in adult specimens. The wax ends pro- 
ject only from the white-tipped secondary feathers, commencing 
next to the inner and whole-coloured ones, and range outwards. 
Besides the white tips to the secondary quills it has the usual 
white terminations to the primary coverts, and the patches at the 
end of the outer webs of the primaries are white, suffused in part 
with yellow. This nestling is, I should say, a young male. Of 
tlie parent birds, in the same case, the male has but five tips on 
each wing, scarcely finer than in the offspring, and the female has 
but two minute tips on each wing, both, I should think from their 
plumage, being birds of the previous year paired for the first time. 
In the male, although the yellow band on the tail is vivid in colour, 
the white patches on the outer webs of the primaries are only slightly 
tinged 'with the same hue, whilst in the female the patches on the 
primaries are but narrow white lines, the white on the secondaries 
and primary eoverts is fairly developed, and the band on the tail is 
not so deep as in the male, and straw yellow. 
The above nestling, however, though the first discovered, is not 
the only one known in collections, as Mr. Gould’s beautiful plate of 
the AVaxwing in his ‘Birds of Great Britain’ represents the nest and 
young, the latter drawn from two young ones which were captured 
from a brood of five by Mr. H. E. Dresser, on the 4th of July, 
1858, at Sandbn, a small island near Uleaborg in the Gulf of 
Bothnia. One of these nestlings, as Mr. Dresser informs me, has 
on one wing five large tips and one small one, and on the other 
live large tips.* The companion (possibly a female) has only three 
very narrow tips on each Aving. Those of the first nestling are as 
fine as in most old birds. The number of tips it Avill be noticed, 
in this case are even in one specimen and uneven in the other. 
Here, then, we have two out of three nestlings, showing five and 
six tips in their earliest stage, and, as my list gives but three out of 
forty-one adult males with as few as four tips to each Aving, they 
* 'fhe young bird figured by Dresser in his ‘Birds of Europe ’ is described 
as one “lately out of the nest” and, I presume, the same from Avhich his 
description of the nestling plumage is taken, the locality and date being 
Archangel, 9th August. He also adds that the young birds figured by Gould 
are younger than the one he describes and “ someAvhat paler in colour, but 
otherwise agree closely Avith it.” 
