462 
APPENDIX. 
have come under my notice of late years, are by Mr. Blyth, in Charles- 
worth’s Mag. Nat. Hist, for 1837, p. 81, and Mr. Eyton, in the same 
volume, p. 358 ; the former introduces the subject in a paper on 
“ Psychological Distinctions between Man and other Animals,” and 
the latter in one bearing the title of “ Remarks on the Theory of 
Hybridity.” Mr. Westwood, in ‘Trans. Entom. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 196, 
has a paper entitled “ Description of a Hybrid Smerinthus, with re- 
marks on Hybridism in general.” Dr. S. Moreton, in the American 
Journal of Science for 1847, published a memoir on the general sub- 
ject, entitled “ Hybridity of Animals considered in reference to the 
question of the Unity of the Human Species.” 
A FEW NOTES ON THE MOULTING OF FEATHERS IN SPRING. 
So little attention has been bestowed on this subject, that I copy a 
few casual notes. Adult birds of the Lams marinus , Z. argentatus , and 
Z. cams, having the head and neck speckled all over with blackish 
feathers in winter, though of the purest white in summer, suggested 
the question how this change was effected, and on examination of those 
parts of the bird, at the vernal season in various years, new, or pen-feathers 
were found springing, as in autumn, preparatory to the general moult. 
There was, however, a general thinness or deficiency of plumage on the 
heads and necks of these species, until the pen-feathers were matured, 
so much so, that the chief taxidermist in Belfast considered birds killed 
from the end of February until the full summer plumage was attained, 
unfit to be set up. In like manner, these pen-feathers were found in 
that portion of the head of the Lams ridibundus which is white in 
winter and black in summer. 
Lams argentatus. March 14, 1848. — Of two adult birds shot to- 
day in company, and which probably had paired, the smaller one 
(proved by dissection a male) has the head and neck wholly white ; — 
on examination, a great many white feathers, in a young state, appear. 
The larger bird ( female ) exhibits more than one-third of the brownish- 
grey winter feathers on the head and neck. New white feathers appear 
plentifully in pens on those parts, and a very few are apparent at the 
anterior part of the back and belly. The ova, in this individual, did 
not exceed one-third the size of an ordinary pea. 
'February, 1849. Adult bird examined early in the month, had the 
