RASORES. 127 



occiput ; on the throat a small gorget-shaped mark of reddish 

 chestnut; all the upper surface rich deep lustrous chestnut, 

 becoming gradually paler on the rump and upper tail-coverts ; 

 primaries dark brown, with pale edges, and broadly margined 

 on the base of their external webs with ferruginous ; a few of 

 the wing-coverts with an oblong spot of rich lustrous coppery 

 bronze on the outer web near the base, the outline of which 

 towards the extremity of the feather is sharply defined and 

 bounded by a line of whitish grey ; others of the coverts are 

 similarly ornamented with a spot of golden-green, and others 

 with deep bluish green, bounded by a more conspicuous line 

 of white; four central tail-feathers brown; the remaind^ 

 grey at the base and tipped with brown, the two colours 

 separated by a broad band of dull black, which band is 

 continued, but is much less apparent upon the central feathers ; 

 sides of the neck and all the under surface grey, which 

 becomes paler on the abdomen and under tail-coverts ; irides 

 very dark brown ; feet bright pink-red. 



Sp. 464. PHAPS HISTRIONICA, Gould. 

 Harlequin Bronzewing. 



Columba {Peristera) histrionica, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc, part viii. 

 p. 114. 



Peristera histrionica, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol., vol. v. pi. 66. 



I first met with this new and beautiful Pigeon on the 

 2nd of December 1839, while encamped on the banks of the 

 Mokai, a river which rises in the Liverpool range, and falls 

 into the Namoi. 



I was strolling beside the stream at sunrise, when one of 

 these birds rose from the water's edge, flew to the distance of 

 forty yards, and again alighted on the ground, where it 

 assumed much of the air and actions of a Sand-Grouse 

 [Pterocles). A fortnight after this I descended about one hun- 

 dred and fifty miles down the Namoi, and while traversing the 



