ZOOLOGY. 
CXCVll 
The young in autumn resemble the summer plumage of the parents ; but 
are not quite so regularly marked. 
These birds are easily killed, especially in the breeding season, when the 
female will suffer herself to be taken on the nest. When in pairs the male 
will not quit the female on her being shot. They were killed in con- 
dderable numbers in Melville Island, as a supply of provision to the ships’ 
companies. 
This species is not found in the British Islands. 
6. Tetrao Lagopus. Ptarmigan. 
Gmel. 749. Lath. Ind. ii. 639. no. 9. Fabr. 80. — Ptarmigan. Arct. Zool. p. 315. Mont. Orn. Diet. 
Lath. Si/n. iv. 741. 
Inhabits the country South of Barrow’s Strait and East of Regent’s Inlet, 
but was not met with in the North Georgian Islands. It is the ptarmigan of 
Scotland. The specific character of the T. Lagopus of Gmelin, commencing 
with “ Cinereus" marks it as referable to the present species, the coloured 
plumage of which in the summer season is cinereous, Avith minute black 
lines and spots, excepting in the head and neck, where it is rightly charac- 
terized by the same author, as marked with “ broad bands of black, 
ferruginous, and white the white prevails in the throat, and the black and 
ferruginous in the crown and hind head. 
This species has also fourteen black feathers with white tips, which 
undergo no change from season ; it has also two additional middle in- 
cumbent feathers, which the preceding species has not. These feathers 
are very variable in colour; in some specimens, both of summer and 
winter birds, they are white ; in others, also of both seasons, they 
approach to black, with broad white tips; and in occasional summer 
specimens they are of the same colour as the upper plumage ; these two 
feathers are exclusive of six long feathers of the superior (coverts, the outer 
ones being shorter than the others,) which are white in winter, and cinereous, 
Avaved Avith minute bars of black, in the summer. 
3 b 2 
