WHITE'S THRUSH. 255 



Very much confusion has long prevailed with respect to 

 this bird and several others more or less nearly approaching 

 it in appearance, which by some ornithologists are regarded 

 as forming a genus distinct from Turdus and called Orco- 

 cincla, so that a few words on this subject may not be amiss. 

 It has already been said that White's Thrush, Turdus 

 varius, Pallas, was by its first describer noticed to be pos- 

 sessed of fourteen tail-feathers — a number very unusual 

 among birds of its Order. But the same peculiarity is 

 shared by a second species closely resembling it at first 

 sight. This is from Java, and was described by Horsfield 

 in a paper read before the Linnean Society in 1820 (Trans. 

 Linn. Soc. xiii. p. 149) under the title of T. rariu.s, which 

 name being preoccupied since 1811 by Pallas for the northern 

 bird, Bonaparte and Prof. Sundevall have respectively and 

 simultaneously proposed to be altered to Oreocincla Jiors- 

 fieldi (Ptev. de Zool. May, 1857, p. 205) and 0. malaijana 

 (Journ. fiir Oru. May, 1857, p. 161). But the Javan 

 species can unfailingly be distinguished from T. varius, 

 Pallas, by the rounded form of the wing, in which the second 

 primary is considerably shorter than the sixth, and all the 

 quill-feathers are much broader, while T. varius, Pallas, has 

 the feathers narrower and the second primary considerably 

 longer than the sixth. All the other allied species, like 

 ordinary Thrushes, have but twelve tail-feathers, and this 

 serves at once to distinguish them, though several of them 

 have mottled backs, and two at least may easily be con- 

 founded. These are the Indian T. dauma and the South- 

 Australian T. lunulatus, but the relative length of the 

 primaries again furnishes the means of separating them. 

 In the former the second quill is some bit longer than the 

 sixth, while in the latter the second is slightly but decidedly 

 shorter than the sixth. Another difterence may be also 

 found in the colour of the tail : in T. dauma the second, 

 third and fourth pairs of rectrices (particularly the third) are 

 much darker than the two middle pairs ; while in T. lunu- 

 latus the second, third and fourth pairs are not very much 

 darker than the two middle pairs, and are more or less obso- 



