550 BULLETIN 186, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Piprisoma modestum [pwrtim], Gtldenstolpe, Ibis, 1920, p. 466 ("Throughout 

 the whole country" [partim] ) . 



The streaked-breasted flowerpecker is apparently restricted to 

 the districts east of (and including) the Khun Tan chain and is com- 

 paratively common only in Nan Province, whence I have three speci- 

 mens : A juvenile male from Doi San Ho, June 2, 1936, and two adult 

 males from Ban San Tha, March 31, 1937. Gyldenstolpe's example 

 was a male collected "among the Koon Tan Hills," May 17, 1914; 

 the one taken by Eisenhofer and listed (1915) by Gyldenstolpe seems 

 to be no longer extant. 



This is a species of the foothills and uncultivated lowlands. At 

 Ban San Tha it occurred in small numbers at a tree laden with ripe 

 berries, in company with no less than three other kinds of flower- 

 peckers. In notes and habits it is quite like the species of Dicaeum. 



The birds of March 31 had the gonads greatly enlarged. I have 

 noted that their irides were brown-orange. 



The adult of either sex has the entire upperparts dull olive-green, 

 rather brighter and yellower on the rump and upper tail coverts, 

 each feather of the front and crown with a minute blackish central 

 spot; the remiges and rectrices black, narrowly edged with yellowish 

 olive-green; a narrow and indistinct ashy- white mustachial streak 

 separated from the chin and throat by an indistinct dull olive-green 

 stripe; the remaining underparts ashy white, very faintly tinged 

 with creamy on the breast, belly, and under tail coverts, washed with 

 olivaceous-ashy along the posterior flanks, and broadly but indis- 

 tinctly streaked with olivaceous-ashy on the breast, upper abdomen, 

 and anterior flanks. In worn plumage the upperparts become darker 

 and browner and the underparts lose the creamy wash. 



I am not prepared to believe that more than one species of this 

 genus inhabits the Asiatic mainland and accordingly place our birds 

 under the name agile. 



No topotypes of Piprisoma a. modestum have been available, but 

 since Hume described his race from "S. Tenasserim," which, fide 

 Davison apud Hume (Stray Feathers, vol. 6, 1878, p. 200), means 

 "Mergui and to the south of that place," one may assume that speci- 

 mens from Trang, Peninsular Thailand, represent modestum. Three 

 examples from Trang agree perfectly with two from Gunong Tahan 

 and one from Negri Sembilan (a paratype of Robinson and Boden 

 Kloss's remotum, which was described after comparison with birds 

 from Trang believed to be modestum and is now synonymized with 

 finschii of Java ! ) . If modestum does not inhabit the whole of the 

 Malay Peninsula (and Java?), one must take the improbable view 

 that the population of Trang are in fact ■fmschii (or remotum) and 

 not modestum at all. 



