Viscount Walden on three neio Species of Birds. 487 



received immediately from him, and bearing that name on 

 their labels, existed and perhaps even still exist, though 

 unfortunately not in the British Museum. Several of such 

 specimens I, in former years, have examined (a good many 

 more, indeed, than Mr. Sharpe has ever seen) j and I can 

 confirm the suggestion made more than ten years since 

 (Ibis, 1862, p. 50, note) that Holboll's F. arcticus was founded 

 upon the adults of the Greenland and of the Iceland form, 

 under the mistaken idea that the latter were the young of the 

 former. That Mr. Sharpe's " new species " is "as distinct 

 from the true Iceland Jer Falcon as is the Jer Falcon of Nor- 

 way," can, I think, be hardly likely ; for I have not been 

 able to detect any proportional difference in the Greenland 

 form (F. candicans) and the Icelander (F. islandus), while 

 the " new species " is obviously intermediate between them. 

 On the other hand, the difference in proportion between the 

 Icelander and the real Gyrfalcon (F. gyrfalco) is, as I have 

 elsewhere shown (Yarrell's Brit. Birds, edit. 4, i. pp. 47, 48). 

 very considerable. I am, &c, 



Alfeed Newton. 



Magdalene College, Cambridge, 

 November 20, 1873. 



LVII. — Descriptions of three new Species of Asiatic Birds. 

 By Akthur, Viscount Walden, P.Z.S., F.E.S., &c. 



Alcedo rufgastra, n. sp. 



Chin and throat creamy white, washed faintly with rufous ; 

 remainder of under surface, the under tail-coverts, and wing- 

 coverts deep bright rufous ; spot before the eye rufous, paler 

 in some than in others ; feathers of the head black, with a 

 penultimate bright blue band, those of the cheeks all bright 

 blue ; back and upper tail-coverts bright blue ; wing-coverts 

 black, washed with blue, each feather tipped with bright blue ; 

 scapulars and rectrices black, washed with blue. 



Wing 2*5 inches, tail 1'62, bill from nostril 1*37. 



Described from three male examples obtained in the island 

 of South Andaman by Lieutenant B. Wardlaw Ramsay. 



This is a well-marked form, intermediate between^, moluc- 

 censis and A. asiaticd. Above it nearly resembles the first; 

 underneath it is undistinguishable from the last. 



Pomatorhinus ochraceic&ps y n. sp. 

 Lores black ; ear-coverts brown, washed with ochreous ; 



