446 NOVITATES ZOOLOOICAE XXIV. 1917. 



long middle rectrices are sometimes much lighter, sometimes darker, more 

 tinged with rufous brown, and the width of the black bars is not constant. 

 The underside is equally variable. The sides of the breast are sometimes 

 much lighter, more " buffy golden-brown," especially in the type of herezon'skyi 

 and in worn summer bii'ds. The colour of the chest and breast is also variable ; 

 sometimes these parts are so strongly washed with green and the feathers have 

 such wide dark green edges, that they remind one strongly of P. colch. 

 vlangalii — which is of course very different on the upperside. More often 

 there is hardly any or very little green on the chest and breast, except along 

 the middle of the latter. 



Among the Tsin-ling males are specimens which agree absolutely with 

 others collected in Kansu ))y Russian explorers and received from the Museum 

 in St. Petersburg and from the late Th. Lorenz in Mo.seou, others ^^hich agree 

 with the type of herezowskyi and with chonensis, as well as with holdereri, as 

 far as I remember, having seen the latter some years ago, and judging from 

 the description of Schalow. With regard to that, it is remarkable that the 

 author named a bird .shot on the same day, and therefore not far away — as one 

 does not travel fast in those mountains — P. strauchi. 



5. On " Ring-necked " Pheasants. 



Not so very long ago all the Ring-necked Pheasants of Eastern Asia were 

 thought to be one and the same, except the Formosan Pheasant, Phasianus 

 colchicus jormosaniis. When Ogilvie-Grant, in 1893, published the Catalogue 

 of the Game-buds in the British Museum, he united them all, not having enough 

 material to sejjarate them. It was Rothschild who, iu liKll and I'JOi!, first 

 broke this spell. 



In the former year (Bull. B.O. Club. xii. p. l'I) bo used for the Ussuriland 

 Pheasant the name " PJiasiaini.s lorquatxs monrjoliciui,'^ in 190.'! {op. cii. xiii. 

 p. 43) he corrected his mistake and called it P. t. pallnsi, describing specimens 

 collected by the brothers Dorries on the Lower iSidemi, Ussuriland. Soon 

 afterwards followed Buturlin with quite a volley of names. He had compared 

 and studied a good many specimens and for the first time discovered several 

 very distinct forms, but he shot over the mark and created also some unnecessary 

 synonyms. 



There are among the "Ring-necks" two groups: one with wide cream- 

 coloured superciliary stripes, one without. To the latter belongs /'. colchicus 

 decollatus, and often jormosanus, in which it is narrow and not rarely wanting. 

 P. c. decollatus can always be recognised by the want of any superciliary stripe, 

 while an indication of a white neck-ring is not rare, and sometimes the latter 

 is quite distinct, being interrupted behind and in front, or even, exceptionally, 

 in front only ! P. c. decollatus lives east of the habitat of torquatu-'^, in the 

 Chinese provinces of Kwei-chou, West Hunan, Eastern Yunnan and Setchuan 

 to Ta-tsien-lu, apparently (? ) south into Northern Tonkin. 



Another form has a whitish superciliary stripe, but narrower than in ior- 

 quatus and its allies. This form is a nomenclatorial monster without com- 

 parison. Buturlin {Ibis, 1904. pp. 383. 407. 408) fir.st named it: 



Phasianus holdereri kiangsiiensis , 

 because he imagined that it occurred in Kiangsu, but, as his original descrip- 



