1874.] DE. FIXSCH'S 'DIE PAPAGEIEN.' 281 



(Holdsworth, P. Z. S. 1872, p. 426, no. 65). Mr. Hume knows this species by its sldn only. 

 Let me transcribe his remarks : — " When we turn to calthropw, Layard, it is the same story ; on 

 no evidence, but his own personal conviction, on the contrary in the face of all existing evidence, 

 Dr. Finsch calmly says : ' Questions in regard to differences in the adult plumage, and to whether 

 the male and female are always differently coloured, still lack in this species an altogether more 

 rigorous investigation. The numerous phases of plumage which I have seen, permit me to assert 

 with tolerable certainty an entire similarity in both sexes. Noteworthy and wonderful however, 

 always remains the black colour of the bill in the younger birds.' But as a matter of fact, no 

 further investigation is required, because a dozen different observers have cleared up the main 

 point at issue viz., the colour of the adult female's bill, but our author absolutely ignores all this 

 because it is irreconcileable with his theory ! Unlike the other species with which I have 

 previously dealt, I have never myself shot or dissected examples of calthropce, but I have more 

 faith in human testimony than our author apparently has, and having a large series of specimens 

 carefully sexed by three different European observers, I can state the following with ' tolerable 

 certainty ' independently of what better naturalists than myself have already recorded to a similar 

 effect" {t. c. pp. 18, 19). I have given all the published facts within the possibility of 

 Dr. Finsch's knowledge in 1868, and Mr. Hume's observations on Dr. Finsch 's account of this Ibis, 1874, 

 species. Mr. Hume carefully abstains from stating the name of a single observer with whose ^' 

 investigations Dr. Finsch ought to have been acquainted, and " in the face of whose evidence " 

 Dr. Finsch " flies." Nor does he dare to name one of the " dozen different observers " whom " our 

 author absolutely ignores," nor of the " naturalists " who " have already recorded to a similar 

 effect." Since Layard and Kelaart, that is since 1868, the only Ceylon naturalists who have written 

 in any accessible, even if any, scientific journal on Ceylon ornithology are Holdsworth, Vincent 

 Legge, and Hugh Nevill ; and the first is the only one who has touched on the point at issue, 

 and then only in 1872. 



The next Indian species known to Mr. Hume, Palceornis melanorhynclms, Wagler, was 

 divided by Dr. Finsch, guided by the evidence existing in 1868 (Papag. ii. pp. 66, 70), into two 

 species — P. lathami, Finsch, with the maxilla red in both sexes, and P. melanorlvjnchus, Wagler, 

 with the bill, in both sexes, black. Subsequent investigations have led to the conclusion that 

 these are sexual differences, and that only the adult male possesses a red maxilla, while the 

 young birds and adult females possess black bills [conf. Walden, Ibis, 1873, p. 297, no. 2). 

 For his conclusion, erroneous though it may now prove to be. Dr. Finsch is assailed with a 

 volley of silly invective. Let, then, the facts before Dr. Finsch, the facts recorded up to 1868, be 

 examined. In the first place both Jerdon and Blyth confounded, by erroneous identification, the 

 Indian bird and the Javan and Bornean P. alexandri (Birds of Ind. i. p. 263 ; Ibis, 1866, p. 353), 

 and Dr. Finsch had therefore good grounds for being uncertain as to which of the two species 

 they referred. Jerdon further described the bird has having " a large red * patch on the wing, 

 formed by most of the lesser and some of the median coverts " (/. c), which is not the case, as 

 Dr. Finsch acutely remarks. Hodgson regarded the black-billed bird as belonging to a distinct 

 species and named it P. nigrirostris (Gray, Zool. Misc. p. 85, 1844), and in the ' Calcutta Journal 

 of Natural History' for 1847 (p. 560) its specific validity, its claim to rank as distinct from the Ibis, 1874 

 * I suspect that the word " red " is a slip of the pen for yellow. P' "' 



