SHARP-TAILED GROUS. 
41 
of the head and neck have but a single band of rusty, and are 
tipped with white; those however of the crown are of a much 
deeper and more glossy black, with a single marginal spot of 
rusty on each side, and a very faint tip of the same, forming a 
tolerably pure black space on the top of the head. The feathers 
between the eye and bill, those around the eye above and beneath, 
on the sides of the head, and on the throat, are somewhat of a 
dingy yellowish white, with a small black spot on each side, 
giving these parts a dotted appearance, but the dots fewer and 
smaller on the throat. The feathers of the back and rump are 
black, transversely varied on the margin and at tip with pale 
bright rusty sprinkled with black, forming a confused mixture of 
black and rusty on the whole upper parts of the bird; the long 
loose-webbed upper tail-coverts being similar, but decidedly and 
almost regularly banded with black and sprinkled with rusty, 
this colour being there much lighter and approaching to white, 
and even constituting the ground colour. The breast is brown, 
approaching chocolate, each feather being terminated by a white 
fringe, with a large arrow-shaped spot of that colour on the middle 
of each feather, so that when the plumage 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 blackish spots: the 
long flank feathers are broadly banded with black and white, 
VOL. III.—L 
