488 
SHARP- TAILED GROUSE. 
rusty, this colour being there much lighter and approaching to 
white, and even constituting the ground colour. The breast is 
brown, approaching to chocolate, each feather being termina- 
ted by a white fringe, with a large arrow-shaped spot of that 
colour on the middle of each feather, so that, when the plu- 
mage lies close, the feathers appear white with black crescents, 
and are generally described so. On the lower portion of the 
breast, the white spots, as they descend, become longer and 
narrower, the branches forming the angle, coming closer and 
closer to each other, till the spot becomes a mere white streak 
along the shaft, but, at the same time, the white marginal 
fringe widens so considerably, that the feathers of the belly 
may be properly called white, being brown only at their base, 
but the shaft is white even there, with no more than a brown 
heart-shaped spot visible on the middle. The heart-shaped 
brown spots of the belly become so very small at the vent, that 
this part appears pure white, with a few very small black- 
ish spots ; the long flank feathers are broadly banded with 
black and white, somewhat tinged with ochraceous exteriorly ; 
the under tail-coverts are white, blackish along the shafts, 
and more or less varied with black in different specimens, 
also vary considerably as to the size and shape of all the 
spots, being in some more acute, in others more rounded, 
&c. The wings are eight inches long, the third and fourth 
primaries being the longest ; the scapulars are uniform with 
the back, but, besides the rusty sprinkling of the margins and 
tip, the largest have narrow bandlike spots of a pure bright 
rufous, a slight whitish streak along the shaft in the centre, 
and a large white spot at the end. The smaller wing-coverts 
are plain chocolate brown ; the spurious wing, and outer 
coverts, are of the same brown, but each feather bears at the 
point a large and very conspicuous pure white spot ; all the 
other superior coverts are blackish, sprinkled, and banded with 
rusty, each furnished with a conspicuous terminal spot ; the 
under wing- coverts, together with the long axillary feathers, 
are pure white, each with a single small dusky spot, and are 
