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THE BIRDS OF THE BANDA ISLANDS. 

 BY ERNST HARTERT. 



THE Banda Islands, south of Ceram, consist of one large island, Great Banda or 

 Lonthoir, and nine small islands. They are close together, and the fauna on 

 all of them mnst evidently be the same. They are all elevated, and have a number 

 of recent volcanoes, the outbreaks of which have frequently devastated vast parts 

 of these islands. Each island is fringed with a coral reef. These islands have 

 been cultivated from very early times, and the population has long been very dense. 

 The Bauda Islands are supposed to be the home of the nutmeg tree, and they are 

 very fertile. Owing to the present scarcity of old primeval forest and the density 

 of tlie population, they are not particularly rich in species of birds, nor are they 

 a specially good collecting ground. However, as birds from these islands are 

 scarce in museums, and as some of the species are not known to occur anywhere 

 else, we asked onr able correspondent Mr. Heinrich Kiihn to collect bird-skins on 

 the Banda Islands. He sent us a fine collection from Great Banda, containing all 

 the species known to be peculiar to the group. We also received a few skins 

 collected by our friend Mr. William Doherty from Banda Neira. 



1 am herewith offering a complete list of these collections, which may serve 

 fairly well as a list of the birds occurring on the Banda Islands. 



We became first acquainted to a large degree with Banda birds through the 

 extensive collections made on Banda by one of the best collectors who ever traversed 

 the Eastern Archipelago— the excellent Salomon Miiller, who described nearly all the 

 peculiar species in his great work " Verhandlingen over de natuurlijke Geschiedeni.s 

 der Nederlandsche overzeesche Bezittingen," in footnotes in the volume entitled 

 "Land en Volkenkunde" (Leiden, 1839 — 1844), namely, Rhipidura gqi/amata, 

 Mi/zomela, boiei, Zoster ops Moris. 



Herr von Rosenberg collectedjalso birds on Banda, and so did Wallace, Hoedt, 

 and the naturalists of the Challenger (Salvador!, Free. Zool. Soc. 1878, pp. 83—85, 

 seven species enumerated) ; but complete lists of the best of these collections are 

 not published. 



Our collectionjcontains the following 29 species : 



1. Astur polionotus Salvad. {anted, p. 20.) 



I cannot separate the Banda specimens from those collected on Dammer Island. 

 The/emale, with a reddish tinge and faint indication of cross-bars on the thighs (see 

 p. 20), is not lighter than the lightest examples from Dammer. We have no 7nale 

 from Dammer. The male from Banda has a broad and distinct rafons collar on the 

 upperside ; the underside is uniform, only the abdomen having some indications of 

 bars. A young male (apjiarently in first plumage) is on the upperside deep brown, 

 ■with rufous edges and concealed wide rufous cross-bars to the feathers: the under- 

 snrface is rusty buff with wide cross-markings ; the chest has longitudinal markings. 



