FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 139 
neck above, the feathers are whitish, edged with pale 
flaxen, and with a broad, oblong, medial, blackish brown 
spot at tip; on the remaining part of the neck and 
interscapulars this blackish spot is wider, so that the 
feathers are properly of that colour, broadly edged with 
pale flaxen ; the back and rump, and the upper tail- 
coverts, are of a lighter brown, with but a few merely 
indicated and lighter spots ; the whole inferior surface 
of the bird is white, but not very pure ; the sides of 
the throat are dotted with dark brown, the dots occu- 
pying the tips of the feathers ; the breast and flanks 
are somewhat tinged with flaxen, (more dingy on the 
latter,) and each feather being blackish along the 
middle at tip, those parts appear streaked with that 
colour; the middle of the throat, the belly, and under 
tail-coverts, are unspotted; the base of the plumage is 
every where plumbeous ; the wings are rounded, less 
than four inches long, entirely dusky brown, somewhat 
darker on the spurious wing, all the feathers, both quills 
and coverts, being lighter on their edges; the exterior 
webs of the middle and larger wing-coverts are whitish 
at tip, constituting two white bands across the wings ; 
the primaries are whitish at the origin beneath the spuri- 
ous wing ; the secondaries are inconspicuously whitish 
externally at tip, that nearest the body having a very 
conspicuous whitish spot ; the lower wing-coverts are 
of a bright buff; and as they are red in the male, afford 
an excellent essential character for the species ; the tail 
is three inches long, nearly even, and of a paler dusky 
brown ; the two outer feathers are slightly edged 
internally with whitish, but without the least trace of 
the large spot so conspicuous in the male, and which is 
always more or less apparent in the young of that sex ; 
the feet are dusky, the tarsus measuring seven-eighths 
of an inch. 
The young male is at first very similar to the female, 
and is, even in extreme youth, paler and somewhat 
more spotted, but a little of the beautiful rose colour, 
of which the mother is quite destitute, soon begins to 
make its appearance, principally in small dots on the 
