Mr. R. Swinhoe on the Ornithology of Hainan. 249 



yielding to greyish-white towards their tips. Tail olive-brown, 

 faintly barred with blackish-brown, with the stem of each fea- 

 ther the same colour, which also broadly tips and margins each, 

 increasing on the lateral feathers towards the outer one, which 

 is entirely blackish-brown. Bill blackish-brown ; legs and toes 

 brown, with lighter claws. 



Length about 10 in. ; wing 4-125 (5th and 6th quills the 

 longest, 1st to 4th much graduated) ; tail 4-5, of 10 broad gra- 

 duated feathers, the outer one being "75 shorter than the 

 centrals. 



On the 10th of February, on my journey inland, as I was 

 being carried in my chair over a grassy hill sprinkled with 

 bushes, a Babbling-Thrush flew across the path. It was of a 

 colour so distinct from any thing I knew, that I at once jumped 

 out and gave chase. I found several of them muttering to 

 themselves in the thorny bushes, occasionally showing out of the 

 leaves, and taking a furtive glance at me. The notes they ut- 

 tered were in a broken murmur, like the dreamy cry you hear 

 from barn-door poultry when a hawk flies over. I shot two ; 

 one was only hit in the foot, but it was so frightened that it 

 allowed me to put my cap over it. The irides of the first bird 

 were dingy-black tinged with pink. The other bird had the iris 

 of one eye white, with a pink-chestnut ring round it ; its other 

 eye was as in the first bird. Further inland the species was com- 

 mon; and it occurred both in the jungles of the South, and in 

 the screw-pine (Pandanus) hedges of the West. Its call-note 

 is loud, and the babblings varied and not unmusical. In some 

 the irides are red-chestnut. The captain of the port of the 

 capital city, who showed great taste in the painting and deco- 

 rating of his ofiicial residence, had several species hanging up in 

 well-made and painted cages in the covered entrance to his 

 reception-hall. Among other feathered favourites, he had one 

 of this species, and, to match it, on the opposite side he had a 

 G. chinensis (Scop.). I asked him where this last came from; 

 and he informed me, from the Prefecture of Kaochow, whence 

 it is carried by the West River to Canton, and that he had got 

 his from a junk. It is a common bird in the Hongkong and 

 Canton bird-shops, together with G. perspicillatus, G. sannio, 



