Colors. Head light yellowish cinereous, with a tinge of brown; feathers of the crest broadly tipped with white. All other parts of the plumage light bluish ash color, paler on the under parts and nearly white on the abdomen; nearly every feather of the under parts and of a wide ring around the back of the neck, with a central arrow-head, of brownish black, and with a narrow but very distinct edging of the same. Flanks with longitudinal central stripes, and in some specimens with circular spots of white. Middle of the abdomen frequently with a large spot of pale chestnut; under tail-coverts nearly white, with longitudinal stripes of dark ash and brown. Quills light ashy-brown; shorter tertiaries frequently edged with yellowish-white on their inner webs; bill, black; irides, hazel; tarsi, brownish lead-colored. The width of the white tips of the feathers of the crest varies in different specimens. Sexes very nearly alike; female slightly paler, and not so fully crested. Hab. Texas and New Mexico. Spec. in Mus. Acad., Philada., and Nat. Mus., Washington. Obs. This species does not resemble any other at present known, and is therefore easily recognized. It is the type of Wagler’s genus _Callipepla_, in which are also arranged the California Partridge and Gambel’s Partridge. [Illustration: Plate 20 The Brown-headed Finch Ammodromus ruficeps (_Cassin_)] AMMODROMUS RUFICEPS.—Cassin. The Western Swamp Sparrow. PLATE XX.—Adult Male. The only information that we can present to the reader respecting the bird now before him, is, that specimens were brought from California in the collections made by Mr. Bell and Dr. Heermann. It appears to have been overlooked by all other naturalists,—a circumstance probably not to be attributed to its rarity in its native country, so much as to the character of the localities in which it lives during the greater part of the year, in common with other species of the same family.