( ('-^ ) 



Female. — Above olive green, much more grey on the hind-neck ami lieud. lielow 



pale grey with a slight olive green wash ; middle of abdomen, axillaries, and under 



wintr-coverts white. The female is smaller than \\\emale, with the wing onlv 50 mm. 

 t^ J ^^ • 



(1-96 inch). Its iris is orange brown, its bill dark brown, base ochreous, legs blackisli. 



After so many collections having come to Europe from the neighbourhood of 

 Manila, Luzon, I am indeed surprised to find that this pretty new bird was found 

 near Manila as well as on the island of Mindoro, but the number of specimens, all 

 carefully dated and mostly also sexed by INIr. Everett himself, leave no doulit as to 

 the localities they came from. 



Prionochilus bioolor, quite recently described liy .Messrs. Bourns & Worcester, 

 on p. 20 of their Preliminary Notes on the Birds and Ma.mmals Collected by Uie 

 Menage Scientific Expedition to the Philippine Islands (^'ol. I., No. 1, of Occasional 

 Papers of the Minnesota Academy, dated December 8th, 1894, but apparently not 

 issued before January 1895), must be very similar to my new bird, but it is desci-ibed 

 as quite tvhite below, has a shorter wing, and was found on a flifierent island, i.e. the 

 hills liack of Ayala, near Zamboanga, South ^Mindanao. P. olivaceits Tweedd. (Ann. 

 and May. Xat.'Hi,sf., xx.. p. 536, 1877 ; id., P. Z. S., 1878, p. Ill, PI. viii., iig. 8 ; 

 Sharpe, Cat. B., x., p. 75) has a longer wing, a whiter throat, lighter lores, and the 

 sexes are said to be similar in colour. It was found on the island of Dinagat. 



In the key to the genera of the Dicaeidae* two sections are made, one •' with 

 a distinct bastard primary," one with " no bastard primary." Dicaewni is included 

 in the latter section, Prionochilus in the former. In Prionochilus, however, as 

 limited by Sharpe, I find a number of species without a bastard primary, and among 

 them my P. inexpectatus. If the absence or presence of a distinct bastard primary 

 is a good generic character, the species without a distinct bastard primary must 

 either be united with Dicaeum, or be kept generically distinct under the name of 

 Pachyglossa Blyth. The former course may perhaps better be followed, for the bills 

 of the species of the genus Dioeiom, as limited in the Catalogue of Birds, vary very 

 much, from a long and slender bill to a short and stout one, which in stoutness and 

 shortness does not remain far behind the bills of several species of Prionochilus. 



2. Anthreptes griseigularis Tweedd. 



This rare species of sunbird was formerly only known from .Mindanao and 

 vSakuyok. After an interval of seventeen years, during which it was never recorded, 

 Jlr. Whitehead obtained a male in the mountains of the province of Isabella, in the 

 extreme north-east of Luzon. Therefore Mr. Ogilvie Grant, Ibis, 1895, p. Ill, 

 expressed his belief that " probably this bird is met with only at considerable 

 elevations, which may account for its occurrence in such widely separated localities 

 as North Jlindanao and North Luzon." This theory, however, breaks down since 

 Everett's men procured two splendid specimens at Laguna de Bai, in the low country 

 near Manila. 



This fact and the discovery of the new Prionochilus (or Dicaeum), described 

 above, seems to show that, in spite of the energetic collecting of birds in the 

 Philippine Archipelago earned out recently so successfully by Americans and 

 lunopeans, something still remains to be done there. 



» Cut. It., X., |i. ■-'. 



