Dicruridae and their Arrangement. 79 



araination of Le Vaillant's type specimen, labelled Le Dron- 

 gup, at Ley den, enabled me some years ago to assert its iden- 

 tity (Ibis, 1867, p. 468) . This is a second instance in this 

 family where Mr. Sharpe appears to have rather hastily re- 

 jected the nomenclature adopted by previous writers. 



D. lophorJwms is an aberrant form of the genus Disse- 

 murus. It is, if the term may be used, a transition species. 

 If the shafts of the outer pair of rectrices were denuded for 

 part of their length, and only webbed at their extremity, it 

 would be a typical Dissemurus. Unless the structure of the 

 outer pair of rectrices be taken into account, the bird is diffi- 

 cult to distinguish from D. malabaricus , ex Ceylon and Ma- 

 labar. In the key to the species of Dissemuroides, D. lopho- 

 rhinus (sive edoliiformis) is stated to be smaller than D. anda- 

 manensis, whereas it is larger. 



The structure of D. andamanens'is and Z). lophorhinus being 

 so dissimilar, I cannot concur in associating them together, 

 much less in forming for their reception a separate genus ; 

 and it seems preferable, and more consistent with their 

 peculiarities of structure, to place the first species under 

 Buchanga, the last under Dissemurus, and to reject the generic 

 title Dissemuroides altogether. 



Dicranostreptus megarhijnchus. — This single species, the 

 type of Reichenbach^s genus, does not possess any one cha- 

 racter sufficient to remove it from the genus Dissemurus. Mr. 

 Sharpe admits Dicranostreptus as a good genus on the strength 

 of the extravagant length of the outer tail-feathers. In both 

 Bhringa and Dissemurus the outer tail-feathers are extrava- 

 gantly long, in the first being more than three times the 

 length of the body ; but, taken alone, the great length of an 

 outer rectrix can hardly be considered a sufficient generic 

 character. The outer rectrix in D. megarhynchus only differs 

 from that in Dissemurus in having the lengthened shaft 

 webbed throughout its entire length, this being normal in the 

 species, whereas, although sometimes occurring, it is abnormal 

 in the other species of the genus Dissemurus, except in D. 

 lophorhinus. In the latter species the outer rectrix is generally 

 completely webbed also, but is not nearly so much prolonged. 



