822 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



often seem like a prelude or promise of something better coming; there 

 is in them such exquisite sweetness, such variety, that the hearer is ever 

 expecting a fuller measure; and still the bird opens its bill to delight and 

 disappoint him, as if not yet ready to begin." (P. Z. S. 1872, pp. 538-539.) 



MiMUS TRiURUs (Vieillot). 



Turdus triurus Vieillot, N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xx, p. 275 (181 8), based 



on "Tres Colas" of Azara (Paraguay). 

 Orpheus tricaudatus d'Orbigny and Lafresnaye, Syn. A v. Mag. de Zool. 

 1835, p. 18 (Chiquitos, Bolivia). 



Description. — Adult male, 283915 Biol. Survey Colin. U. S. Dept. of 

 Agriculture, Puerto Periasco, Paraguay, September 7, 1920, Alexander 

 Wetmore. Total length, 8.55 inches; wing, 4.12; culmen, .68; tail, 

 4.18; tarsus, 1.35. Head and back hair brown with a wash of gray, 

 lower back and rump dull chestnut, broad white superciliaries, wings 

 black with a broad white band from the bend of the closed wing to the 

 tip of the secondaries, involving most of the secondaries and greater wing 

 coverts, below white with a pale ashy wash and a touch of buff on the 

 flanks ; tail with two central pairs of feathers black, the two outermost 

 pairs pure white, and the others white with black on the outer web. Bill 

 and feet black. Sexes alike. 



Geographical Range. — Bolivia, western Brazil and Paraguay to north- 

 ern Patagonia (Rio Negro). 



This Mockingbird does not reach the country covered by the Princeton 

 naturalists. 



Hudson says of this species: "It is by no means numerous in Pata- 

 gonia; certainly nothing was known of its song; but the pleasure I felt 

 on making the discovery of its vocal powers it would be idle for me to 

 attempt to portray. I noticed in the woods of chunar, along the Rio Ne- 

 gro, a few individuals of this species in the month of February ; they did 

 not sing then, but sometimes uttered a harsh note like that of the Mimtis 

 calandria. Had it not been for this note I should have thought the bird 

 to be (seeing it only at a distance) a species of Taenioptera, from its 

 black and white plumage, wild disposition, its rapid, high, and graceful 

 flight. It disappeared in March without my having obtained specimens 

 or heard it sing; for the native residents in Patagonia, many of whom 

 were well acquainted with the bird, had told me that it was a very fine 



