274 The Nomenclature of the liheus of South America. 



greyish white with black shafts and elongated hair-like tii)s 

 to the feathers, becoming buff-colour on the sides of the 

 neck ; chin and upper tliroat white ; sides of the upper 

 mantle and short wing-feathers lead-grey, with black shaft- 

 lines ; the long wing-feathers are disintegrated and com- 

 posed of colours black, white, grey, and brown ; the ui)per 

 back is dusky black, becoming paler and gradually merging 

 on to the lower back, which is silvery grey with darker 

 shaft-lines like the flanks and thighs ; middle of upper 

 breast ash-grey ; I'emainder of under surface pearl-white. 



Total length 53 inches ; exposed portion of culmen 3"5 ; 

 tarsus IS'O ; middle toe and claw 6*0. 



The type, which was collected at Ynglases, Ajo, Buenos 

 Ayres, on the 27th of May, 1909, is in the British Museum. 



We have much pleasure in naming this Rhea in honour of 

 the Hon. Walter Rothschild, who has done so much for the 

 advancement of ornithology in various parts of the world. 



Since this was drawn up the Hon. Walter Rothschild has 

 called our attention to a paper by himself, " On the former 

 and present Distribution of the so-called Ratitte/' which is 

 being published in the ' Proceedings ' of the Fifth Inter- 

 national Ornithological Congress held in Berlin, 1910. 



In this paper he had anticipated us by pointing out that 

 Rhea macrorhyncha of Sclater was a synonym of Struthio 

 americanus of Linnaeus, but had accepted for Rhea americana 

 of authors (nee Linnaeus) Rhea nandu of Lesson. 



We had already looked into this, and concluded that Rhea 

 nandu was simply a substitute name for the Rheas as a 

 whole, and consequently inacceptable for this species. In 

 support of which we copy Lesson^s introduction of his name 

 (Man. d'Orn. ii. p. 208, 1828) :— ''Ce genre ne renferme 

 qu^uie espece nommee nandu, churi, autruche d'Amerique, et 

 quelquefois par erreur touyou. C^est le rhea nandu, ou 

 struthio rhea de Linne, qui vit sur les bords du detroit de 

 Magellan, ou les voyageurs Font souvent prise pour une 

 veritable espece d'autruche.^^ 



Moreover, Temminck, in the 40th livraison of the PI. Col., 

 text to pi. 237 (1823), had already used Rhea nandua 

 as a substitute name for Rhea americana, and this usage 

 has five years priority over Lesson. 



We also find that d^Orbigny, in the Itinerary of his 

 Voyage (ii. p. 67, note, 1834), gave the chief diagnostic 

 character, when he proposed the name of Rhea pennata for 

 the species from Patagonia commonly known as Rhea 



