58 Dr. A. B. Meyer's Field-notes 



ened tail-feathers are narrower ab initio, and are not formed 

 by being rubbed off, except at the last stage, which, however, 

 does not touch the principle that also here immanent causes 

 affect the shape of these feathers. The same remarks apply 

 to M. philippinus. 



Meropogon FORSTENi (Temm.). 



There existed before my journey to Celebes only one male 

 specimen of this interesting species in the Ley den Museum, ob- 

 tained by Forsten, in the year 18-41, near Tondano, at an eleva- 

 tion of 2000 feet in the Minahassa. Professor Schlegel showed 

 me the specimen before I went away in 1870, and urged 

 me to rediscover it, as none of Forsten^s successors, Wallace, 

 Rosenberg and others, had brought it home. Mr. Wallace, 

 in his charming book, 'The Malay Archipelago' (i. p. 429), 

 says, in the chapter on the '' Natural History of Celebes,^^ 

 " In the next family, the Bee-eaters, is another equally isolated 

 bird, Meropogon forsteni, which combines the characters of 

 African and Indian Bee-eaters, and whose only near ally, 

 Meropogon breweri, was discovered by M. Du Chaillu in West 

 Africa ! " African afinities being said to give a characteristic 

 feature to the Celebean fauna, and, besides, M. forsteni being 

 so rare that the Celebean origin of the bird was doubted, 

 I resolved to do my best in searching after it. I therefore 

 made about a hundred coloured sketches, and distributed them 

 among the natives, to send away into the mountainous 

 districts, and put a relatively high reward on a skin. I got 

 the first specimen at the end of the month of May 1871 from 

 a forest near Rurukan, not very far from the place where 

 Forsten had procured his specimen some thirty years before ; 

 and afterwards, in June, I found the bird in the richest virgin 

 forest which I have seen in these regions, on the way from Lan- 

 gowan (about 2000 feet) to Pangku, where it apjDearcd to be not 

 so rare. I suppose that M. forsteni only inhabits the moun- 

 tainous districts, like Enodes erythrophrys jHerniphaga forsteni , 

 &c. ; but, of course, I am not sure of this. I should not say 

 these birds are rare, but only known to occur in restricted lo- 

 calities ; if only these localities are discovered, the bird proves 



