This specimen differs even more widely from the female, than does my type from the male of A. vociferus. The ochraceous of the lores, superciliary-stripe, and neck-collar, spreads over the entire plumage both above and beneath, giving it a tawny tinge which overlies and obscures the usual dark markings. On the shoulders, breast, lores and throat this color deepens to a fine reddish-chestnut, and elsewhere it replaces the ashy, dirty white and other light tints of the eastern birds. In its general coloring the plumage strikingly resembles that of the brown phase of Scops asio kennicotti. The ochraceous neck-collar is also present in the male from the Santa Rita Mountains, but it is less distinctly defined, being somewhat obscured, especially on the nape, by dusky mottling. In all other respects this example agrees closely with my type.
The egg is white with a dull gloss. At first sight it appears to be immaculate, but a closer inspection reveals a few faint blotches of the palest possible purple, so faint indeed that they might pass for superficial stains were it not for the fact that they underlie the external polish. The absence of well-defined markings may probably be explained by the assumption that the bird had laid one or more clutches earlier in the season, thus exhausting her supply of coloring pigment. The specimen measures 1.17 × .87.
355, ♂ ad., Santa Rita Mountains, May 11. Length, 9.90; extent, 18.70; wing, 6.50; tail, 5.15; culmen, .76; tarsus, .70; longest rictal bristle, 1.73.
(To be continued.)
NOTES UPON THE OSTEOLOGY OF CINCLUS MEXICANUS.
BY R. W. SHUFELDT.
It has never been my good fortune to enjoy the opportunity of studying the habits and manners of our American Dipper in its native haunts, but this seems to have been due more to my ill-luck, than to any neglect on my part to seize upon every chance to visit the localities where this bird, one that I have so often longed to see alive, certainly should have occurred; I refer to the rocky, mountain streams that course down the gorges of the Big Horn Mountains and the Laramie Hills. Many a time I have scrambled alone up through the rocky cañon that marked the bed of one of these noisy, bounding torrents with the vain hope of finding Cinclus, but, like many a naturalist before me, I was obliged to leave the country where these birds undoubtedly occur without ever having seen one of them. So that of my own personal experience I have nothing to add, so far as its life history is concerned, to the many beautiful descriptions of this bird given in our standard ornithologies, familiar to all lovers of the science, and to those read in its literature.
Of skins of Cinclus I have examined many a score, as has every one who from time to time has gone through large collections, but the very nearest, the most intimate acquaintance that I can boast of ever having made with this little bird, was with a pair and three young that had been stowed away by themselves in alcohol for several years in the large collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Of this material I was kindly allowed to avail myself, or of so much of it at least as was necessary to develop the facts that I now have the pleasure of presenting to my reader in this paper.
I did very little with the viscera, and this part of its anatomy has been laid aside for some future study, my attention having been directed more particularly to the skeleton, and to the extremely interesting points that it presented for consideration. These I shall endeavor to describe, as minutely and elaborately as the limits of this article will permit, at the same time suppressing as many of the technicalities in terms, as is compatible with exactness, and in accord with the tastes of those who have not devoted themselves especially to anatomical reading and work.
In studying the skeletons of birds, or of anything else for that matter, the student must keep the fact ever present in his mind, that the great value of such studies and the descriptions that may follow them, rests almost entirely upon the comparisons that he makes; the more carefully and minutely he compares the form he may have under consideration with nearly related forms, the greater will be the value of his results; to this end tend all the studies of biologists of the present day.