ORNITHOLOGY ZYGODACTYLI. 75 



King-fishers. They inhabit woods, especially in mountainous regions, seldom 

 betray their presence by any sound, make their nests low on the ground, in 

 the hollows of old trunks of trees, fissures in rocks, &c., and subsist upon all 

 sorts of insects and small conchylia. To these beloug, from the Indian 

 Archipelago, Dacelo concreta, pulchella, ci/anotis, dea, si/ma, and some new 

 species from the Celebes and the Moluccas. As these authors observe, 

 D. luccoidcs is the female of D. pulcliellu. 



New species : Halcyon coronatus, S. Miill. and Scldeg , from Timor (1. c.), 

 JI. platyrostris, Gould, from the Navigator Islands, and H. sonlidus, Gould, 

 from New Holland (Ann. Nat. Hist, xi, p. 324), H. leucogaster, Eraser, from 

 Fernando Po (Ann. xii, p. 441), //. sauropliaga, Goidd, from New Guinea 

 (Sulphur, Birds, p. 39, tab. xix). 



ZYGODACTYLI. 



. The so-called Cuculus rufus, has again become the subject of 

 discussion. 



Liudermayer says (Isis, p. 337), that among probably a thousand C. ca- 

 norus, brought to the market in Athens, only one C. rufus will be found, and 

 that consequently the opinion that C. rufus is merely the female, or in the 

 young state, is entirely without foundation. To which Brehm (Isis, p. S90) 

 has replied, and of all ornithologists he may, probably on this point, be con- 

 sidered the most competent. He remarked that the Red Cuckoo is in 

 general rare ; that occasionally, also, older as well as one year old females 

 present the red plumage, and that more frequently, young red males also 

 become gray. Brehm consequently regards the Red Cuckoo as merely an 

 accidental variety, which in old, that is to say, in birds that have moulted, is 

 common only in the female. 



That Lindermayer saw only one Red Cuckoo is explained by Brehm to arise 

 from the circumstance, that, in the first place, the females migrate at a later pe- 

 riod, and probably, like the old autumnal birds and the young, in an entirely dif- 

 ferent direction, and also because the Red Cuckoo is in general very seldom 

 captured ; since in 30 years he had not obtained more than four specimens of 

 old red females. The females of many species are caught with difficulty, and 

 scarcely ever when on their passage. 



Cuculus liimalayus has been declared by Brehm (1. c.) to be a sub-species of 

 C. canorus, or, if preferred, of C. tenuirostris. 



A specimen of Cuculus glandarius has been killed in the county Gal way, in 

 Ireland. (Ann. xii, p. 149.) 



New species from the Indian Archipelago are, Cwctihts sepulchralis, tym- 



