556 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM VOL, 97 
All but one of the Venezuelan specimens listed above are more 
greenish, less bluish gray on the upper back than the Brazilian birds, 
a difference difficult to fully explain by their more abraded plumage. 
The Brazilian birds agree with a specimen from near the type locality 
of melanoptera in eastern Peru. Specimens from the lower Amazon 
and from the Guianas are intermediate between typical palmarum 
and melanoptera; on the whole it seems that lower Amazonian birds 
are palmarum while Guianan examples are nearer to the present race. 
Hellmayr (Catalogue of the birds of Americas, pt. 9, 1936, p. 228, 
footnote) writes that the characters of melanoptera are most strongly 
pronounced in birds from Upper Amazonia. Birds from the Orineco 
Basin, Trinidad, the Guianas, and Brazil north of the Amazon he 
finds inseparable although varying somewhat in the direction of the 
nominate subspecies. ‘There seems to be considerable individual 
variation in the degree and extent of purplish or bluish gray on the 
upper back and breast. The most purplish bird seen is the most 
nearly topotypical—a specimen from the headwaters of the Hualloga 
River, Peru. It is matched above by several of the present series 
from Rio Negro, but exceeds them in the ventral violaceousness. 
RAMPHOCELUS CARBO CARBO (Pallas): Silver-beaked Tanager 
Lanius (Carbo) Pauuas, in Vroeg’s Catalogus, Adumbratiunculae, 1764, p. 2 
(“Surinam’’). 
SPECIMENS COLLECTED 
lad. o&, lad. 9, 2 unsexed (= 9 ?), Mandos, Amazonas, Brazil, September 
26-30, 1930. 
1 ad. o, Barcellos, Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil, October 6, 1930. 
lad. &, Santa Isabel, Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil, Octuber 9, 1930. 
5ad. #7, lim. #7, lim. 9, Sado Gabriel, Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil, January 
2-16, 1931. 
lad. o&, lad. 9,1 (im. ?) 9, Cucuhy, Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil, February 
1-3, 1930. 
1 ad. o, Brazo Casiquiare, Cafio Atamoni, Venezuela, February 6, 1931. 
lad. o, lim. &, 2 im. 2, San Antonio, Upper Orinoco, Venezuela, March 
3-8, 1931. 
1 ad. o&’, Puerto Ayacucho, Rio Orinoco, Venezuela, January 2, 1930. 
4 ad. o', 2 im. o&, 38 ad. 2, Puerto Ayacucho, Rio Orinoco, Venezuela, May 
13-20, 1931. 
Hellmayr (Catalogue of the birds of the Americas, pt. 9, 1936, 
p. 254, footnote) observes that birds from the Upper Orinoco are 
intermediate between curbo and venezuelensis, and that “it is a matter 
of personal preference to refer them to one rather than the other 
race.” This may be true of adult males, but the females of the two 
forms seem to be quite readily differentiated; in venezuelensis the 
females are more reddish, between chestnut and mahogany red, less 
cinnamomeous; in carbo more brownish, the abdomen ferruginous. 
One of the males from Sao Gabriel, January 2, is molting into adult 
plumage. 
