PASSEE DOMESTICrS. 
601 
AdMt male (Ceylon). Length 5-6 to 5-8 inches ; wing 2-95 to 3-1; tail 2-3 to 2-4; tarsus 0-65 to 0-7; middle toe 
0-6, claw (straight) 0-19 ; bill to gape 0-52. 
Female, Length 0'6 inches ; wing 2‘7 to 2’8 ; bill to gape 0'5 ; tail 2‘1 to 2'2. 
Male. Iris olive-brown, greyish brown, or brown ; bill black ; legs and feet fleshy brown or reddish brown. Some 
specimens have the culmen abnormally ridged, and the contour of the bill varies somewhat in different individuals. 
Breeding-plumage. Centre of the forehead, crown, and nape ashy grey ; lores, upper part of cheeks and ear-coverts, 
chin, down the centre of the throat, chest, and upper breast black ; this colour extends more or less over the eye 
(in some specimens hardly traceable) and also past the gapo, uniting the black of the lores with that of the chin ; 
cheeks, ear-coverts, and sides of throat just below the ears whitish, more or less faintly tinged with greyish, and 
bounded beneath by the black of the chest, which spreads out ; a few white feathers occasionally above the eye, 
above which, extending down the sides of the nape upon the neck and uniting across the back of it, is a long 
patch of deep chestnut ; lesser wing-coverts and upper part of back the same, the latter region striped broadly 
with black ; median coverts deeply tipped with white, which is surmounted by a black patch on the inner webs 
of the feathers ; greater coverts and tcrtials black, at the centres of the feathers broad margins of chestnut- 
brown ; primaries and secondaries dark brown ; primary-coverts blackish brown ; the whole narrowly edged with 
fulvous, which encroaches on the w'eb just beyond the primary-coverts, and also near the centi'e of the longer 
primaries, forming two patches on the closed wing; lower back and rump bi’ownish grey, marked generally on 
the rump with fulvous ; tail greyish brown, the feathers finely margined with tawny grey ; beneath from the 
breast to under tail-coverts impure white, darkened with greyish on the flanks ; shafts of the under tail-coverts 
dark ; under wing whitish, the edge marked with black. 
Winter phmiage. After the autumnal moult the black throat-feathers are tipped with white, deeply on the chest and 
narrowly on the throat ; the upper-surface feathers are tipped with yellowdsh brown, giving a tawmy appearance 
to the head, and almost obscuring the chestnut of the hind neck ; the greater wdng-coverts and tertials are much 
more deeply edged wdth chestnut of a more fulvous hue than the breeding-colour. The chestnut patch just 
behind the eye is less obscured than other parts, but even there the feathers are tipped with fulveus. 
As the breeding-season approaches these margins w'ear off and leave the black and chestnut pure, but at the lower 
part of the chest where they are deep they mostly do not quite disappear. 
Female. Iris browmish olive ; bill olive-brown; margin and base of tarsus fleshy ; legs and feet fleshy. 
Head, huid neck, and lower back greyish brown, with often a tawmy tinge ; back striped with black on one w’eb of 
the feathers as in the male, the other w'ebs being dusky tawny ; wdngs brown, with the m.arkings distributed as 
in the male, but of an obscure tawny colour, the white tips of the median coverts not so deep ; tail pale brown ; 
a buff-wdiite stripe above and behind the ejm, between which and the ear-coverts there is a brown stripe ; ear- 
coverts grey ; chin and throat sullied white ; under surface whitish, washed wdth grey on the chest and the 
flanks ; feathers at the sides of the breast with dusky shafts, under tail-coverts with blackish ones. 
Young. Iris dark olive-brown. Above greyish browm, obscurely banded on the head, hind neck, and rump with a 
darker shade ; the interscapular feathers fulvous, the inner webs blackish ; wing-coverts and tertials tipped and 
broadly margined wdth buff-W'hite, above which the web is blackish; secondaries very broadly edged with huffy ; 
tail very pale browm ; eye-stripe and ear-coverts as in the adult female ; cheeks faintly barred wdth brow'uish ; 
chin and throat pale isabelline grey ; under surface whitish, tinged wdth buff. 
Ohs. The Ceylon llouse-Sparrow belongs to that normally somewLat smaller and, as regards the female, slightly 
differently coloured race which inhabits India, and which has been separated by Jardine as P. indieus. Seeing, 
however, that the Sparrow’ has evidently, from the region in which the species was first installed by a creative Pro- 
vidence, followed the march of those classes of the human I’ace w’hich dwell in permanent habitations, it cannot 
have been otherwise as regards India, if, indeed, it was not there that it was originally located. It has been found to 
vary in size and coloration in certain districts which it has perhaps, at no very remote period, invaded. Mr. 
Seebohm remarks on the extremely bright colouring of the males he procured on the Lower Petchora, in Northern 
Eussia, as compared wdth any thing he has seen ; the Sparrow, therefore, in that region might be said to constitute 
a local race. In Siberia (whither, according to Professor New’ton, it has wandered since the Eussiau conquest) 
it occasionally attains a very large size : an example from Krasnoj’arsk measures 3-2o inches in the W’ing, showing 
that the climate of that region is conducive to robustness. I contend, therefore, that the difference in size of 
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