352 BULLETIN 186, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The alleged size differences are slight or nonexistent in the authors' 

 own tables, while color characters in this species are so much subject 

 to change, both seasonal and post mortem, that, unless really striking, 

 it seems unwise to use them as racial criteria at all. 



Thanks to Dr. Mayr's courtesy, I have before me the original series 

 (3) of vernayi, as well as 20 specimens of galbana from every known 

 locality in its Thai range. So far as color is concerned, all examples 

 taken in Thailand between December 4 and January 30 are galbana, 

 while those collected between April 6 and July 14 could be vernayi, 

 and a breeding topotypical bird of September 3 is so gray that it 

 might belong to an undescribed form. Using the -material at hand, 



All nonmolting adult males from Thailan agree with argentauris 

 galbana is separable from vernayi only by its slightly longer wing, 

 in having the wing length 75 mm. or longer but differ from it in their 

 more golden, less orange, nuchal collar, and, on the assumption that 

 this distinction has nothing to do with age of skins, I accept galbana, 

 at least for the present. It seems to me highly probable, however, 

 that future workers will find it necessary to combine galbana with 

 either vernayi or argentauris, or even to place both of the more 

 recent names on the synonymy of the Nepalese race. 



LIOCICHLA RIPPONI (Oates) 



Indo-Chinese Liocichla 



Trochalopterum ripponi Oates, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, vol. 11, 1900, pp 10-11 



("Shan States"). 

 Trochalopteron phoeniceiim ripponi, Riley, Journ. Siani Soc. Nat. Hist. Suppl., 



1933, p. 155 (Doi Langka). 

 Liocichla ripponi ripponi, Riley, U. S. Nat. Mus. Bull. 172, 1938, p. 322 (Doi 



Langka ) . 



This extraordinary species has been found in Thailand only by 

 Smith, who collected, on Doi Langka, a male, November 12, 1930, and 

 a male and a female, April 26, 1931. 



Nothing has been recorded of its habits nor have I been able even 

 to learn whether it is a terrestrial or an arboreal form. The example 

 of November 12 is in postnuptial molt. 



It has the crown and nape gray (more or less suffused with oliva- 

 ceous) ; the remaining upperparts olivaceous-brown; the primaries 

 with the outer web edged crimson basally, yellow apically, the crimson 

 inwardly increasing in extent; the outer secondaries similarly edged 

 olivaceous-brown basally, then gray, crimson apically, the innermost 

 almost wholly olivaceous-brown, all narrowly tipped with buff y white ; 

 the truncate rectrices olivaceous-brown on the basal half, indistinctly 

 barred with blackish near the center, blackish on the apical half, the 

 outer ones suffused with dull red-orange beneath, all narrowly tipped 



