58 COCK OF THE PLAINS. 
The female of the Cock of the Plains, represented in the plate 
of one half the natural size, is from twenty-eight to thirty inches 
in length. The bill is one inch and a quarter long, perfectly 
similar to that of T. urogallus, perhaps a trifle less stout, and with 
the base (if this remarkable character be not accidental in our 
specimen) farther produced among the feathers of the front. The 
whole plumage above is blackish, most minutely dotted, mottled, 
and sprinkled with whitish, tinged here and there with very pale 
yellowish rusty, hardly worth mentioning: on the head, and all 
the neck, the feathers being small minutely crossed transversely 
with blackish and whitish lines, gives the plumage quite a 
minutely dotted appearance: the superciliar line is slightly 
indicated by more whitish; on a spot above the eye, in the space 
between the bill and eye, and along the mouth beneath, the black 
predominates, being nearly pure: on the throat, on the contrary, 
it is the white that prevails, so as to be whitish dotted with black: 
on the lower portion of the neck the black again is the prevailing 
colour, the black feathers there being nearly tipped with grayish; 
the sides of the neck are pure white for a space; from the lower 
portion of the neck to the upper tail-coverts inclusively, the back, 
scapulars, wing-coverts, and secondaries, the blackish feathers 
have each two or three yellowish white bands, which are broader 
especially on the upper part of the back, and are moreover 
. sprinkled with white somewhat tinged with rusty: the scapulars 
and wing-coverts are besides shafted with white somewhat dilating 
towards the point, the scapulars being of a deeper black; the 
spurious wing and primaries are plain dusky with paler edges, the 
outer with some indications of whitish dots (generally found in 
Grouse) on the outer vane, but no regular white spots; the 
secondaries are tipped with white, and those which are next to 
the primaries nearly plain on their inner web; the primaries 
are rather slender, the inferior surface of the wings is of a 
