1872.] ON THE BIEDS OF CELEBES. 157 



C. sepulchralis^ S. Miiller, is the title of a third very distinct species, which inhabits Java. 

 When adult it may be at once recosjnized from C. mcrulinus of Java by its longer bill, and from 

 all the races of that species by its much longer wings and tail, by the chin, cheeks, and ear- 

 coverts only being pale ashy, the head dark grey, the upper surface bronze-green, and by the 

 whole under surface, the chin excepted, being ruddy fulvous. The white markings on the 

 rectrices are fewer, smaller, and chiefly consist of triangular edge-spots, and not of bands running 

 right through. In transition plumage this is in all probability the C. pyrogaster, Drapiez. C. 

 sepuIchraJis, S. Miiller, belongs to the group which includes G.flahcUiformh, Lath., C. dumetonim, 

 Gould, and C. insperatus, Gould, fi-om Australia, also several races of small Cuckoos of the Austro- 

 Malayan archipelago, as C. assimilis, G. K. Gray, Aru Islands, C. infaustus, Cabanis, Mysol, and 

 some undetermined species in Goram, Batchian, Morty, and Salawati, likewise C. simus, Peale, 

 Feejee Islands, C. castaneiventris, Gould, Cape York, and C. Ironzinns, G. E. Gray, in New 

 Caledonia. No member of this group has been identified as inhabiting Continental Asia ; yet 

 the Bengal specimen, stated by Dr. Jerdon (B. of Ind. i. p. 335) to have the rufous extending to 

 the chin, may belong to it. 



A fourth group of Plaintive Cuckoos is represented by C. fymbonomus, S. Miiller, from 

 Timor ; to it belongs the C. paliidus (Lath.) of Australia, and an undetermined species from 

 Waigiou. In C. fymhonomtis the upper surface is pale olive-brown, inclining to ashy on the 

 head and rump ; the under surface is paler and more cinereous ; under tail-coverts tawny, or 

 pallid rufous; middle pair of rectrices immaculate, but broadly tipped with brown; the remainder 

 tipped with white, and partially toothed on the inner webs with white. This species and its 

 allies also pass through a rufous phase. 



C. sonnerati. Lath., founded on Sonnerat's Petit coucou des Indes (Voy. Indes, ii. p. 211), Tr. Z.S.vlii. 

 from its being more or less rufous at all ages, and a small species, has been often confounded ^' '^^' 

 with either one or other of the foregoing. Its Javan representative, but slightly differing, is the 

 C. pravatiis, Horsf., = C. fasciolatus, S. Miiller, =:C. rufomttatus, Drapiez. The group is also 

 represented in Sumatra, Malacca, Borneo, and Ceylon. This form, raised to generic rank by 

 Dr. Cabanis {Penthoceryx), has the bill long, broad at the base, and uncompressed throughout its 

 entire length, the maxilla overlapping the mandibula. In old birds the rufous and dark brown 

 bands of the upper plumage are washed with bronze-green. From the chin to the under tail- 

 coverts each feather is white, traversed by usually three narrow, dusky, irregular lines ; the white 

 interspaces being three or four times as broad as the dusky lines. A uniform transverse striated 

 appearance is thus imparted to the imder plumage, never found in any other group of the small 

 Asiatic Cuckoos. The middle pair of rectrices are, according to age, either almost entirely dark 

 brown with a bronzy gloss, or else have both sides of the shaft dark brown, indented with bright 

 rufous. The lateral rectrices are never evenly barred through, are always bright rufous 

 with dark cross marks, have a Avhite or else a pale fulvous terminal spot and a jjenultimate 

 broad dark brown band. Many of the frontal plumes are white at their base and in the 

 centre — a character alone sufficient to distinguish this group from any of the Plaintive Cuckoos 

 in hepatic plumage. 



C. infuscatus, Hartl., is either another type of the Plaintive Cuckoos, or else it belongs to the 

 same subsection of C. passeriniis ; or it may prove to be only a phase of C. simus. 



Y 



