Prof. Blasius on the Ornithulugy uf Heligoland. G7 



birds received from Paris, which Bonaparte himself, in his 'Con- 

 spectus/ i. p,240, declares to be his Phj/llopneuste javanica, and 

 which fully corresponds with a specimen of the P/ti/llopneuste 

 javanica, or PhyUopneuste magnirostris, Blyth (no. 15969), lately 

 received from VeiTeaux. Looking over my travelling notes, and, 

 for the sake of science, comparing my stock, I was struck by a 

 bird, also received from Verreaux, marked with the number 23707, 

 without any denomination, the origin of which was described as 

 follows :— " Sea of Ochotsk, latitude 59° 38' N., longitude 147° 

 30' E., Thursday, Septem>er 15, 1853. Eyes dark {noir) blue." 

 Both the birds, from Java and from the Sea of Ochotsk, are so 

 closely alike, that I was not able to ascertain from my fragment- 

 ary travelling memoranda to which of them the specimen of 

 Heligoland might belong. But, after a closer comparison of the 

 two birds, I can state that they do not belong to the same species, 

 independently even of the circumstance that the places where 

 they have been found are removed nearly 70 degrees of latitude 

 one from the other. The name of the Javan species being 

 already fixed, the question is to know if the Siberian species has 

 been already described, or not. Bonaparte, in his ' Conspectus,' 

 quotes the following Asiatic species : — Sylvia brevirostris, Strickl., 

 S.fuscata, Blyth, and S. griseola, Blyth, from Middle Asia, and 

 Ficedula cor onat a, Temm., from Japan; but none of these forms 

 correspond with the one from the Sea of Ochotsk. Von Mid- 

 dendorfFalso, in his ' Voyage,' describes the Sylvia {PhyUopneuste) 

 sibirica, v. Midd., as a new species, and the Sylvia {PhyUopneuste) 

 eversmanni, Bonaparte. The first has nothing to do with the 

 bird of the Sea of Ochotsk, w^hilst the latter perfectly corresponds 

 with it. Von MiddendorfF obtained his Sylvia eversmanni on the 

 Boganida, in latitude 70° north, and on the western declivity 

 of the mountain Stanowoj, on the river Ujan. The place agrees 

 pretty well with that of my bird from the Sea of Ochotsk. 



But the bird of von MiddendorfF is certainly not that of 

 Bonaparte. Bonaparte's PhyUopneuste eversmanni is simply the 

 Sylvia ictei'ina of Eversmann rebaptized (Eversm. Addend, ad 

 Zoogr. Ross.). Bonaparte, in his Consp. p. 389, not only cites 

 the bird of Eversmann under the head of this species, but he 

 gives also, in his ' Revue Critique,' p. 30, his reason for doing 



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