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black of the male much less deep, and tinged with ashy; and the lowerparts paler and brownish. Female paler and browner, as usual, passing to ashy on the rump and upper tail-coverts, and with the lowerparts still lighter-coloured. Proportions of M. nigropileus, but the tail-feathers broader and considerably less firm towards their tips; the beak is also conspicuously longer, measuring to gape an inch and threeeighths and the colouring is much the same as in M. nigropileus, but the contrasting ashy and brown are softened down almost to homogeneity. Inhabits the Neilgherries; being the species referred by some authors to the European Blackbird, which it resembles in its song: the latter species is common in Afghanistan.

21. M. castanea, Gould, P. Z. S. 1835, p. 185. Length about eleven inches, of wing five and a half, and tail four inches; bill to gape one and a quarter, and tarse the same. Colour a bay-chesnut, darkening on the interscapularies, and paler below; the head and neck grey, darker on the crown, and albescent on the throat and fore-neck; wings dusky, the tertiaries partly margined with brown ; and the tail blackish, its lower coverts mingled deep black and white: bill yellow, and legs yellowish. The female has all the colours less intense, the wings and tail brown, and the lower tail-coverts mingled brown and white: bill chiefly dusky. Himalaya. This species is nearly allied to M. albocincta.

22. M. leucogaster, nobis, n. s. I only know this from a well executed drawing prepared by the late Dr. Griffith, during his journey from Assam to Ava, and now in the possession of Dr. McClelland: there can be no doubt of its distinctness as a species. Colour slaty-black, the lores, throat, fore-neck, and breast, deep black, and the belly dull. white. Length about nine inches and a half, of wing five and a quarter, and tail above four inches; bill to gape an inch and a quarter, and tarse the same.

Petrocincla, Vigors. Rock Thrushes.

23. P. erythrogastra, (Vigors), P. Z. S. 1831, p. 171; Gould's Century,' pl. XIII: P. rufiventris,* Jardine and Selby, Ill. Orn., 1st series, pl. CXXIX. The two figures here cited shew what different representations may be made of the same species, provided the true

There is also a Turdus rufiventris, Vieillot, from Brazil.

colouring be not rigorously adhered to: thus Mr. Gould has coloured it with a black throat and fore-neck, adding a slight gloss of blue; and the other naturalists cited have coloured these parts entirely blue, with a white margin separating them from the blue of the rest of the neck. Now the true colouring of the throat and fore-neck is a dull blue, with occasionally a medial rufous patch on the latter, and the feathers being margined with pale greyish; the latter accounts for the white border assigned by Sir W. Jardine and Mr. Selby: again, the latter naturalists have coloured the tail much too blue, and have also exaggerated the edgings of the wing-feathers, which edging might indeed be erased altogether: the back, too, should have been rendered much darker and more dingy than the head and rump, which, with the shoulder of the wing, are alone bright blue; and the lores, ear-coverts, and sides of the neck, are black, contrasting with the blue of the crown, and passing into the dusky-bluish of the fore-neck. The females vary a good deal, but have always a much greater admixture of black on the lower-parts and sides of the throat, than is shewn in Gould's figure of this sex; the ground hue is often, but not always, much more rufous; and though there is generally a pale mesial space on the throat and fore-neck, even this is in some specimens wholly variegated with the black margins to the feathers. The sexes of the young are conspicuously different in the nestling plumage, from the young males having the wings and tail blue, which in the females are brown, as in the adults respectively; and the pale central spots to the clothing plumage are also much more rufescent in the young males, and albescent in the young females. Common in the Himalaya.

24. P. longirostris, nobis, n. s. This species I only know from a female, presented to the Society by Captain Boys, who procured it on the march from Scinde to Feroze pore. It is remarkable for the length of its bill, and for the pale greyish colour of its upper-parts, which would indicate that the blue of the male is considerably paler than in the three following species. Length about eight inches and a half, of wing four and a quarter, and tail three and a quarter; bill to gape an inch and three-eighths, and tarse an inch. Upper-parts light brownish-grey, browner on the wings, and greyer on the tail; the lower-parts pale fulvescent-grey, obscurely marked with dusky; bill blackish, and

legs brown. Very distinct from the females of the three following species.*

25. P. affinis, nobis, XII, 177 (bis). Rare at Darjeeling; but common along the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, from Tipperah and Arracan to the Tenasserim Provinces. The males of this species have generally some intermixture of rufous about the vent and lower tail-coverts, varying in quantity, but seldom nearly so much as in P. manillensis; whereas in P. pandoo, I believe there is never a trace of this rufous. The females are altogether bluer than those of P. pandoo, especially on the upper-parts; and the under-parts, the feathers. of which are margined with black as in the rest of the group, have the ground-tint more or less rufescent. It is decidedly a distinct species

from the next.

26. P. pandoo, Sykes, the male; P. maal, Sykes, the female: Turdus solitarius, var. A, Latham. Inhabits central, western, and southern India. The general plumage of this species is always less distinctly mottled than that of the preceding one, both above and below; this distinction being very obvious when several specimens of both are seen together and in P. manillensis the feathers are much more mottled than in P. affinis. I allude to the margining of the feathers, which have subterminal blackish bars, edged with whitish; but which in P. pandoo are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, while in P. manillensis they may be said to ocellate the whole plumage more or less, and in P. affinis they are constantly intermediate. P. manillensis is also of a lighter blue than the two others.

P. manillensis, (Gm.) Inhabits the Philippines and China. The male of this species appears to have constantly the whole abdominal region deep rufo-ferruginous, the feathers margined as above described; and the female has the pale rufescent hue of the lower-parts more predominant, with a slighter dusky margin to each feather: tail perfectly

Can this be P. cyanea of Europe? Lord A. Hay has procured a species in Kashmir, which he thinks is the European one; and various other European birds occur there, as Corvus monedula and Coracias garrula, which (as his lordship informs me) abound in the valley of Kashmir.

A Tenasserim specimen just received has much more rufous on the abdomen than I ever observed before in P. affinis; but its distinctness from P. manillensis is nevertheless obvious. This bird likewise inhabits Assam; and the Society has just received a specimen of it from Goalpara.

squared; whereas in P. pandoo the outermost rectrices are a trifle shorter than the rest, and in P. affinis they are a good deal shorter, the penultimate and ante-penultimate also graduating.

Monticola, Brehm: Petrophila, Swainson; Orocetes, G. R. Gray. 27. M. cinclorhyncha, (Vigors): O. cyanocephala, Swainson : Black-collared Thrush, var. A, Latham. The members of this group are of a shorter make, and more Chat-like, than those of the preceding one, with greater variegation in the colouring. The Indian species is perfectly true to the type of the European M. saxatilis, which is the standard of the division. In this bird the sexes, as I have been informed; resemble each other; but such is not always the case, for a female in the Society's collection is very similar to the female of M. saxatilis, though differing of course in not having the tail rufous, nor the indication of the white mark on the croup of the male M. saxatilis, as also in its under-parts being less rufescent. In both species, the female plumage is of the same general character as in the female Petrocinclæ. The young also are similarly much spotted with pale fulvescent; the young males of M. cinclorhyncha being distinguished from the other sex by possessing the white spot upon the wing, the same as in the sexes of the Stone Chat (Pratincola rubicola), while also in nestling plumage. The present species is a hill-but not a rock-bird, frequenting the tops of trees in the forests: and it extends its range to all India in suitable localities; being met with occasionally, but rarely, in the plains during the seasons of passage, at which period (that of vernal migration) I once obtained one in the vicinity of Calcutta, which I kept for some time alive. Its song is sweet, plaintive, and tolerably loud; delivered in the manner of a Robin's song: and its manners are very like those of a Stone Chat.

The Turdus eremita, Gm., founded on le Merle solitaire de Manille of Buffon, would seem to be the female of a species of this division, and not (as I suggested in XII, 182,) that of Petrocincla manillensis, both sexes of which are figured in the Planches Enluminées.

From the Thrushes, we may pass to the Myiotherine birds of Swainson, leading to his Thamnophilina: a great series of forms, more especially developed in South America. In India, we have

Cinclus, Bechst. The Dippers. One species, confined to the Himalayan torrents, and which was originally discovered in the Krimea,-C.

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Pallasii, Tem., figured in Gould's Century.' Allied to this is C. americanus, Say, of the Rocky Mountains of North America. Of the third and well known European species, C. aquaticus, found also in Western Asia, Mr. Yarrell states that the sexes are alike in plumage; but in specimens of this bird in the Society's Museum, from England and Norway, there is a very marked sexual diversity, such as described in Fleming's 'British Animals."

Brachyurus, Thunberg: Pitta, Vieillot. There are at least four marked sub-groups comprehended under this genus, as follow:-1. Paludicola, Hodgson; a name pre-occupied for a genus of reptiles. To this must be referred Myiothera cærulea, Raffles, v. Pitta gigas, Tem., from Malacca and Sumatra: and Pal. nipalensis, Hodgson, from Nepal, Darjeeling, and Arracan.-2. The group exemplified by Myiothera affinis, Horsf., v. Pitta cyanura, Tem.; to which, as an aberrant species, may be referred P. cyanea, nobis, XII, 1008, from Arracan and Tenasserim. The affinity of these two species is more obvious in the female sex. Fine specimens of Br. cyaneus are more brilliant than those formerly described from, each feather of the breast and belly being of a beautiful light blue, with a round subterminal black spot and bars above this. The female is blue only on the tail, but with an admixture of this hue on the dull greenish back.-3. The form of P. granatina, Tem., v. coccinea, Eyton: with very long tarse, short wings, &c.-4. The ordinary Brachyuri, of which three species are admissable into the Fauna Indica: viz. Br. triostegus, (Sparrman), v. malaccensis,* (Scop.), v. superciliaris, (Wagler, after Sonnerat, Voy. aux Indes Orient., pl. 110), also abdominalis, (Wagler, after Edwards, pl. 324), and Pitta brachyura apud Vigors, Gould, and others, which name applies to an allied species from the Philippines. This is the common Indian species, and the only one found generally over the country from the Himalaya to Ceylon, and which is occasionally to be obtained near Calcutta, as in the Botanic Garden; but I have never seen it from the eastward of the Bay of Bengal.-Br. cyanopterus, (Tem.), v. malaccensis apud nos, XII, 960: common in the countries eastward of the Bay, from Arracan to Malacca :-and Br. cucullatus, (Hartlaub), v.

This specific name has the priority; but as the bird does not inhabit the Malayan Peninsula, it is a misnomer that cannot be retained. To Mr. Strickland I am indebted for several of the above cited synonymes.

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