FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 
surface of the bird is white, but not very pure; the sides of the 
throat are dotted with dark brown, the dots occupying 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 spurious 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 throat: this colour spreads gradually, and the wings 
and tail, and soon after the head, blacken, of course presenting 
as they advance in age a great variety of combinations. 
For the description of the beautiful adult male, we shall refer 
to Wilson, whose description is good, and the figure accurate, 
VOL. II.—x 
