2. _Pelidna cinclus._ VAR.--Above blackish-brown, plumage edged with cinereous, or whitish; _head_ and _neck_ above cinereous with dilated fuscous lines; _eyebrows_ white; a brown line between the eye and corner of the mouth, above which the front is white; _cheeks_, _sides of the neck_, and _throat_, cinereous, lineate with blackish-brown; _bill_ short, straight, black; _chin_, _breast_, _belly_, _vent_, and _inferior tail coverts_ pure white, plumage plumbeous at base; _scapulars_ and _lesser wing coverts_ margined with white; _greater wing coverts_ with a broad white tip; _primaries_ surpassing the tip of the tail, blackish, slightly edged with whitish, exterior shaft white, shafts whitish on the middle of their length; _rump_ blackish, plumage margined at tip with cinereous tinctured with rufous; _tail coverts_ white, submargins black; _tail feathers_ cinereous margined with white, two middle ones slightly longer, black, margined with white; _legs_ blackish. A male. Length to tip of tail 7 inches. Bill 7/8 of an inch. This bird was shot in November, near Engineer Cantonment, and it is probably a variety of the very variable _cinclus_ in its winter plumage.--JAMES. [191] A sketch of Big Elk is given in Bradbury's _Travels_, volume v of our series, note 52.--ED. [192] Some reminiscences of White Cow (or White Buffalo), will be found in Nebraska Historical Society _Transactions_, i, p. 79 _et seq._--ED. [193] Joshua Pilcher was a Virginian who came to St. Louis when a young man, during the War of 1812-15, and there plied his trade of hatter. He became a director of the bank of St. Louis, and entered the Missouri Fur Company upon its organization, succeeding Manuel Lisa as president upon the latter's death. Upon the dissolution of this company, he was for a time at Council Bluffs in charge of the American Fur Company's interests. He succeeded William Clark as superintendent of Indian affairs (1838), holding the position until his death, in 1847.--ED. [194] _Coluber flaviventris._--Olivaceous, beneath yellow; inferior jaw beneath white; scales destitute of carina. Description. _Body_ above, olivaceous; tinged with brown on the vertebræ; _scales_ impunctured at tip, posterior edges and basal edge black; _skin_ black, beneath yellow, rather paler behind; _inferior jaw_ beneath white to the origin of the plates; _head_ with nine plates above, two longitudinal series, of about four large scales each, intervening on each side between the two posterior plates and the three posterior supermaxillary plates; intermaxillary plate somewhat heptagonal, dilated, emarginate at the mouth, superior angle obtusely pointed; _eye_ black-brown, pupil deep black, surrounded by a whitish line, posterior canthus with two plates. Plates 176, scales 84 Plates 174, - ——