PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



108 Washington : 1958 No. 3397 



THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF THE 

 BIRD GENUS APALOPTERON 



By H. G. Deignan 



The OrniMiological Society of Japan's (1942) list of Japanese birds 

 indicates that, b}^ 1942, 100 species of birds had been reported from 

 the Bonin Islands, an oceanic group of volcanic origin lying about 

 500-600 nautical miles southeast of Yokohama. Of these, only 19 

 species (four of them by then extinct on the islands) were known to 

 have bred. Of the 19, eight pelagic forms (two albatrosses, four 

 shearwaters, one gannet, and a tern) may be disregarded at this Lime. 

 Of the land birds, seven are mere races of species common in the 

 Japanese Archipelago (one hawk, one pigeon, one bulbul, one crow, 

 one thrush, one warbler, and one greenfinch), while two (a pigeon 

 and a hawfinch), extinct and not examined by me, may be presumed 

 to have had similar origin. An anomalous element in the avifauna 

 is found in the former presence of a night heron characteristic of the 

 coasts and islands of the southwestern Pacific and otherwise not 

 occurring north of the Palaus and the Philippines. Finally, there is 

 the genus Apalo'pteron Bonaparte, the subject of these remarks. 



First named Ixos famuiaris bj'- its discoverer, F. H. von Kittlitz,^ 

 and considered a bulbul, it was removed to the "Timaliidae" by 



' Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, vol. 1, pt. 3, p. 235, pi. 13, 1830. 



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