1886.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 365 



ON TURDUS ALPESTRIS AND TURDUS TORQUATUS, TWO DIS- 

 TINCT SPECIES OP EUROPEAN THRUSHES. 



By L,E:0IVIIARI> i^TfiJIVEOER. 



On plate 15, vol. ii, of Dresser's "Birds of Europe" is figured a young 

 female Riug-Thrusli of which the author, in the text (vol. ii, p. 114; pub- 

 lished in 1872) speaks iu the following terms: "We have received from 

 Herr W. Schliiter, of Halle, a naturalist to whose ready assistance we 

 owe the opportunities of describing many a rare bird, a young female 

 of the King-Ouzel, evidently in its first winter plumage, of which we add 

 a full description, as we cannot find any notice of this curious livery in 

 any worh we have examined." Then follows the description, of which 

 we only quote the following as indicating the chief pecularities of 

 the bird : " . . . . quills brown, externally margined with buffy white, 

 which causes a shade of this color to pervade the whole of the outer 



surface of the wing; under surface of the body chocolate-brown, 



the whole of the feathers so broadly margined with whitish that the 

 ground-color of ^be plumage is scarcely perceptible; under wing- 

 coverts creamy white, with a narrow longitudinal indication of brown 

 on some of the feathers. . . ." The plate bears out the characters very 

 well, although we note no "chocolate-brown" color; but inasmuch as 

 we have a specimen before us which nearly exactly matches the plate, 

 we think the latter is more correct, the dark markings on the under 

 surface in our specimen being sepia brown. 



"This curious livery" is not mentioned in any of the usual standard 

 works on European ornithology. It is not described by Temminck, 

 Nilsson, Naumann,* Deglahd, Yarrell and Newton, Macgillivray, &c. 

 Neither have authors writing later than the publication of Dresser's 

 grand work given it even a passing notice. Mr. H. Seebohm, who, in 

 1881, monographed the Thrushes (Cat. B. Brit. Mus., V), and who, in 

 1883, treated of the Eing-Thrush in his " History of British Birds," 

 has also passed by it in absolute silence. 



Nevertheless, as I shall show later on, the "livery" in question has 

 been mentioned repeatedly in the literature, not as a special plumage 

 of the Ring-Thrush, but as a separate species. If some of the authors 

 quoted above had consulted the references cited by themselves in their 

 synonymies, they would have found it described by C. L. Brehm as 

 Merula alpestris. 



It has been the unfortunate fashion to sneer at the species and sub- 



. * 



* In the 6th vol. of his great work, pp. 5-14, he gives some additional notes ou the 

 Ring-Onzel, in which he alludes to this "livery " as that of the younger hird. His 

 notes are chiefly hased on material furnished him by Gloger, and the specimens re- 

 ferred to are evidently the same later on mentioned by Brehm as belonging to T. 

 alpestris. 



