44 
SHARP-TAILED GROUS. 
less bright and glossy. Both sexes, like other Grouse, have a 
papillous red membrane over the eye, not always seen in stuffed 
skins, and which is said to be very vivid in the male of this 
species in the breeding season. This membrane, an inch in 
length, becomes distended, and projects above the eye in the 
shape of a small crest, three-eighths of an inch high. The male 
at this season, like that of other species, and indeed of most 
gallinaceous birds, struts about in a very stately manner, carrying 
himself very upright. The middle feathers of the tail are more 
or less elongated, in young birds scarcely exceeding the adjoining 
by half an inch. 
The spring plumage is much more bright and glossy than the 
autumnal, and also exhibits differences in the spots and markings. 
The specimen we have selected for our plate, on account of its 
being the only one we had from the United States territory, is a 
female in the autumnal dress, and was brought from the Rocky 
Mountains. We think proper to insert here in detail the description 
we took from it at the time, thus enabling the reader to contrast 
it with that made from a Northern specimen in spring plumage, 
rather than point out each and all the numerous and at the same 
time minute and unimportant variations. 
The female represented in the figure was fifteen inches long. 
Its general colour mottled with black and yellowish rufous: the 
feathers of the head above are yellowish rufous banded with 
black, the shaft yellowish: a line above the eye, the cheeks, and 
the throat, are pure yellowish rusty with very few blackish dots, 
and a band of the latter colour from the bill beneath the eye and 
spreading behind. All the lower parts are whitish cream, with a 
yellowish rusty tinge; each feather of the neck and breast with a 
broad blackish subterminal margin in the shape of a crescent, 
becoming more and more narrow and acute as they are lower 
down on the belly, until the lowest are reduced to a mere black 
