Birds observed in Italian Museums. 451 



only; others have grey on the back, but the upper and lower 

 tail -coverts are black. In Sardinia, on the contrary, the C. 

 comix resembles the light-grey type of Northern Europe which 

 winters in Belgium. 



The collection of Count Turati at Milan is of incredible 

 wealth. So far as concerns European birds, I remarked first 

 Syncecus lodoisice^, which made the same impression upon me 

 as upon Mr. Saunders; and I believe that M. Jules Verreaux 

 himself now regards it as an accidental variety of Coturnix com- 

 munis, the more so as an example in an intermediate stage of 

 plumage has been taken in France. Are there not many pre- 

 tended kinds of birds which ornithologists could not distinguish 

 if they were shown the types deprived of certain unimportant 

 details of coloration, upon which they have in fact been founded ? 

 M. Turati possesses a Garrulus melanocephalus {cervicalis) , the 

 Algerian form, which was given to him as coming from Spain. 

 ' If the locality be correct, this is an addition to the European 

 fauna. I remarked also a very singular example of MotaciUa 

 alba from Lombardy. It is in breeding-plumage, and resembles 

 French specimens, except that it has a black streak over the ear 

 from the eye to the nape, which marks out a white semisuper- 

 cilium, so that the head resembles that of the Japanese M. lugens, 

 except that in the latter the black streak exists likewise between 

 the bill and the eye. M. Turati has collected in Lombardy ex- 

 tremely small examples of PJujllopneuste rufa, which seem to him 

 to form a separate race. 



In the Royal Museum at Florence I admired the two species 

 of which I have already spoken. The collection of birds, as 

 Mr. Saunders justly says, is not up to the mark of those at 

 Turin and Pisa ; but the museum contains a magnificant palae- 

 ontological series, admirably directed by MM. Igino Cocchi and 

 Cesare d'Ancona. 



It was with real satisfaction that I read in ' The Ibis ' the 

 praise accorded to the splendid Museum of Pisa, created, in 

 some sort, and directed by the venerable Professor Paolo Savi ; 

 and I had experience of the same feeling in 1866, when re- 

 visiting (after a space of eight and twenty years) this establish- 

 * [Cf. Ibis, 18G2, p. 380.— Ed.] 



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