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several other birds. This species is recorded hy all observers to be a statinuary bird 

 all the year round." It is true that these remarks are very short and abrn])t, but 

 long explanations and deductions are not allowed in the Catalogue of Birds, which, 

 as its name says, is a " Catalogue," and is meant to contain the results only of the 

 study of the material before the respective authors — a very wise plan indeed, as 

 otherwise the great work would have become much more bulky, and we might long 

 have despaired of ever seeing the end of the seiies of volumes, which as it is are no 

 doubt the most useful of all to systematic oruitholoirists. 



The question now remains whether it is advisable to keep the Micropus (jalih;- 

 jensis as a subspecies of M. a//iiiis. My remarks clearly show that I was not quite 

 nninclined to do so, but after all did not do it. I may explain that the galilejemis 

 form reaches from Palestine and Tunis over a great i)art of India — that is to say, the 

 Punjab, Kajputana, Sindh, and the great plains of Northern India — while also those 

 from North-East Africa are rather pale, though not so much perhaps as Palestine 

 birds. It may be observed that all these countries are more or less such with a 

 drier climate, and mostly desert-like. Then we find the dark birds in West Africa, 

 in the damp climate of ("pylon, and in the ecinally damp and hot forest-clad mountains 

 of Sikkim in the flimalayas; but it will be found tliat many specimens cannot with 

 any certainty be assigned to one or the other form without knowing from where they 

 came. If under these circumstances any one should keep M. galilejcnsis as a sub- 

 species M. ajfinis galilejensis (Antin.), he cannot be much blamed; but the distribu- 

 tion of that supposed subspecies would be from Palestine throughout the drier parts 

 of India, North-East Africa, and Tunis, while the dark form — i.e. Micropus ajfinis 

 proper — would occur in more wooded countries with a greater amount of rainfall, as 

 tropical Africa (West Coast), Sikkim, Ceylon, etc. This is not senseless, but it is 

 perhaps just as little wrong or better to refer them all to one sijecies, as has been 

 done by most ornithologists, such as Salvadori {Ann. Mus. Civ., xxix., p. 551, 1890, 

 where a specimen is mentioned as shot in Italy, probably also of the galilejensis 

 form), Dresser, and others. Dresser, however, gives a figure which he says is taken 

 from a Palestine bird, but which shows nothing of the characteristics of the 

 Palestine bird, being almost as dark as a Gaboon bird. Tliere is also a bad 

 synonymy added to Dresser's article in the Birds of Europe (vol. iv., p. 591), for he 

 includes in it M. streubeli (Hart!.), which I consider a small nortliern subspecies of 

 M. caff'er, and M. suhfureatus, which is the eastern form of M. affmis. Its tail is 

 more furcated, it is blacker than the darkest .¥. ajfinis and larger, and rej)laces 

 M. affmis in China, Cochin China, Siam, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Malay 

 Peninsula, Tenasserim, Burma, and Cachar. If any one considers M. sub/'urcatus 

 merely a subspecies of J/, affmis he is not far wrong, but I think it can well be kept 

 as a good species. 



