HYPERBOREAN PHALAROPE. 
85 
inflected at tip. The irides are brown. The head, neck above, 
back, and wing-coverts, are very dark gray, which comes forward 
and round on the lower part of the neck, thus encircling the white 
throat: through the eye from the bill passes a broad dusky stripe 
to the hind head; a rufous line arises behind the eye, which dilates 
into a large patch on each side of the neck, the two nearly joining 
at the back part: the sides of the neck and throat are white, the 
eyelids white; the back and scapulars are of a darker colour than 
the adjoining parts, with large spots of ferruginous on the upper 
part of the back, occupying the outer side of the feathers : the 
rump and upper tail-coverts are banded dusky and white. The 
sides of the breast are dark cinereous, all the remaining lower 
parts are white, the base of the plumage being blackish ash, 
which rather predominates on the flanks, giving to these parts a 
very dark mixed appearance. The wings are four and a quarter 
inches long, and when closed reach precisely to the tip of the tail; 
the under wing-coverts are varied with white and blackish ash; 
the lesser and middle upper coverts are dark blackish gray, the 
latter with a few white streaks at the tip of the outer one : the 
greater are almost blackish, and broadly pure white at the tips, 
which makes a conspicuous band of pure white across the wings : 
the primaries are blackish, slightly edged with paler, and with 
whitish shafts; the secondaries are white at their base, and on the 
margin of their blackish tips, some of them being also white on 
their inner web, so that the white much predominates: the tertials 
are very long and wholly blackish. The tail is little more than two 
inches long; the feathers are blackish gray, edged with pale ferru¬ 
ginous at tip. The feet are of a greenish lead; the naked space on 
the tibia nearly half an inch; the tarsus little more than three 
quarters of an inch, and precisely of the same length with the 
middle toe; the hind toe no more than three sixteenths of an inch. 
In old and perfect specimens, especially old females, this sex 
VOL. iv. —Y 
