SPOTTED GROUS. 
53 
lies close: the feathers of the flanks are blackish, deeper at first, 
and barred with very bright orange, then much mottled with dull 
grayish rusty, each having a triangular white spot near the tip. 
The wings and tail are similar to those of the male, the 
variegation of the scapulars and upper coverts being only of a 
much more rusty tinge, dull orange in the middle on the shaft, 
all the larger feathers having moreover a white streak along the 
shaft ending in a pure white spot, wanting in the male. The 
outer edge of the primaries is more broadly whitish, and the 
tertials are dingy white at the point, being also crossed with dull 
orange; the tail-feathers, especially the middle ones, are more 
thickly sprinkled with rusty orange, taking the appearance of 
bands on the middle feathers, their orange coloured tip being 
moreover not so pure, and also sprinkled. 
The bird represented in the plate comes from the Rocky 
Mountains: it is a male, and remarkably distinguished from the 
common ones of his species by having the tail-feathers entirely 
black to the end. This difference I have observed to be constant 
in other specimens from the same wild locality; whilst all the 
northern specimens, of which I have examined a great number, 
are alike distinguished by the broad rufous tip, as in those 
described, and as also described by Linne and all other writers, 
# . 
who have even considered that as an essential mark of the 
species. The Rocky Mountain specimens are moreover somewhat 
larger, and their toes, though likewise strongly pectinated, are 
perhaps somewhat less so, and the tail-coverts are pure white 
at tip, as represented in the plate. But heaven forbid that 
our statements should excite the remotest suspicion that these 
slight aberrations are characteristic of different species. If we 
might venture an opinion not corroborated by observation, we 
would say, that we should not be astonished if the most obvious 
discrepancy, that of the tail, were entirely owing to season, the 
