Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/408

380 the space around the eye, and between it and the beak, is dark ash grey. The neck, breast and belly white, slightly tinged and patched with brown; the belly and thighs having also broad streaks of dark brown. The upper part of the wings white, slightly patched with brown; the secondaries and tertials brown, tipped with white. The tail is barred with two shades of dark brown, and tipped with light brown. The bird was shot at Gawdy-hall wood, near Harleston, in Norfolk, and is in the Norwich Museum.

The transition from this to the next specimen figured is very easy.

Though alike in the markings of the head and neck, the breast and under parts of this bird retain no vestige of the brown patches which distinguish that last described. The dark streaks on the same parts are also much narrowed, and the feathers on the upper parts of the wings are now only tipped with white, which is also the case with the secondaries and tertials. The tail resembles that of the last. This bird was killed at Horning, in Norfolk, in 1841; and is also in the Norwich Museum. It is labelled "Adult male."

I have endeavoured, in the above descriptions, to trace the order and connexion of the remarkable changes of plumage to which this species is subject; but at the same time I have considerable doubts as to the entire correctness of the arrangement which I have adopted.

It gives me much pleasure to know that you intend continuing 'The Zoologist' during the year 1844. A few years ago, although a person were as utterly unacquainted with the realities of Nature as a nun; though he had never stirred above a mile from home; though he could not distinguish a breccia from a true conglomerate, or an insect from a worm; yet if he could repeat a long list of orders, genera and species, he was esteemed a naturalist—a star of the first magnitude. But now the world is changing; and I trust that this change will in no slight degree be hastened by the continuance of your periodical.

Perhaps there is no race of creatures in the whole world which can