284 Mr. H. Seebohra on HorsfiehVs Woodcock. 



identical. Tlie type of S. saturata was, twelve years ago, in 

 the India Museum. The species was described in 1821 from 

 an example collected by Horsfield in Java; but it may have 

 disappeared before the birds in the India Museum were 

 handed over to the national collection, as it cannot now be 

 found. 



It is unfortunate that the type of so interesting a species 

 should have been lost, as no examples are known to exist in 

 any other collection than the Leyden Museum, which pos- 

 sesses two collected by Boie on the mountains of Java. One 

 of these two examples is moulting its quills, and the first 

 primary is not full-grown, being half an inch shorter than 

 the second. In the other example the two first primaries are 

 of about the same length. 



In 1869, when Schlegel was describing the type of Sco- 

 lopax 7'osenbergi, he unfortunately compared it with the 

 example of S. saturata in which the first primary was not 

 fully grown. This circumstance — combined, no doubt, with 

 the fact that the Javan example, having been exposed on the 

 shelves of the Leyden Museum to the combined action of 

 more or less dust and sunshine for nearly forty years, had 

 acquired a " museum colour,^' which contrasted considerably 

 with the fresh-killed example from New Guinea — induced 

 Schlegel to designate the latter as distinct. Horsfield de- 

 scribed S. saturata as one of the rarest of Javan birds, 

 inhabiting a mountain 7000 feet above the sea-level. Schlegel 

 recorded his supposed new species from the mountains in the 

 interior of the north-western peninsula of New Guinea. The 

 fact that Wallace's Line dividing his Oriental Region from 

 his Australian Hegion passes between tlie two localities, and 

 the further fact that in the Moluccas, which lie, if not 

 exactly, at least to some extent between the two localities, a 

 perfectly distinct species of Woodcock, S. rochusseni, is found, 

 suggest the probability that the two birds are distinct. This 

 does not, however, seem to be the case. Limicoline birds 

 appear to have originated in the Polar area and to have been 

 dispersed — certainly once, and probably twice — by climatic 

 changes which, by depriving them of food, compelled them to 

 emigrate. Their present distribution is the result of past 

 emigration ; but, as might be expected from their great 



