Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/539

Rh blackish-brown under the eye, inchiding the ear-coverts, and another about an inch and a half long on the side of the throat. Supra-ocular membrane scarlet ; bare skin of the sounding-bladder dusky orange. The long feathers of the cervical tufts are dark brown on the outer webs, pale yellowish-red and margined with dusky on the inner, excepting the lowest, which are all brownish-black. The lower parts are marked with large transverse curved bands of greyish-brown and pale yellowish-grey, the tints deeper on the anterior parts and under the wings. Under tail-coverts arranged in three sets, the middle feathers convex, involute, white, with two concealed brown spots ; the lateral larger, of the same form, abrupt, variegated with dusky, red, and white, the extremity of the latter colour, but with a very narrow terminal margin of black. The tibial and tarsal feathers are grey, obscurely and minutely banded with yellowish-brown.

Length 18 inches, extent of wings 27^; bill along the back /g, along the edge J^ ; tarsus 1^ ; weight 1 lb. 13 oz.

Adult Female. Plate CLXXXVI. Fig. 3.

The female is considerably smaller, and wants the crest, cervical tufts and air-bags ; but in other respects resembles the male.

LiLiuM SUPERB UM, WUld. Sp. PL vol. ii. p. 88. Fursh, Fl. Amer. Sept. vol. L p. 280 Hexandria Monogynia, Linn — LiliacEjE, Jmsa

This beautiful plant, which grows in swamps and moist copses, in the Northern and Eastern States, as far as Virginia, as well as in the western prairies, attains a height for four or five feet, and makes a splendid appearance with its numerous large drooping flowers, which sometimes amount to twenty or even thirty on a single stem. The leaves are linear-lanceolate, three-nerved, smooth, the lower verticillate, the upper scattered. The flowers are orange-yellow, spotted with black on their upper surface, the petals revolute. I was forced to reduce the stem, in order to introduce it into my drawing, the back ground of which is an attempt to represent our original western meadows.