of Birds from N. W. Fohkien. 1 73 



p. 338, and came to the conclusion that S. svffusa must 

 be considered a synonym of S. bulomachus. When lately 

 examining the large series at the British Museum, I was 

 surprised that they had not gone a step further, and joined 

 S. hulomachus to S>. wehhiana. The distinctions have always 

 seemed to me to be singularly unsatisfactory, and are briefly 

 the following : — S. wehhiana, is supposed to be ashy brown 

 on the back, while ;S^. bulomachus is pale olivaceous brown 

 and has a shorter tail — S. wehhiana being the Northern, as 

 S. bulomachus is the South China form. Every supposed 

 characteristic of the northern form can be found in southern 

 birds, and vice versa : the length of tail is by no means 

 constant in either; the supposed difi'erences in massiveness of 

 bill are infinitesimal, and seem to me to be marks of age ; 

 and, to crown all, while S. svffusa is described in the B. M. 

 Catalogue as "very similar to webbianaj" Messrs, Seebohm 

 and Styan make it synonymous with S. bulomachus ! Mr. 

 Ogilvie Grant agrees with me in the view that S. wehhiana 

 ought to be the sole surviving name for a species which 

 ranges from Mongolia to Formosa, of which S. hulomachus, 

 Swinh., S. suffusa, Swinh., S. longicauda, Campb., and no 

 doubt S.fulvicauda, Campb., also, are merely synonyms. 



T 6. YUHINA NIGRIMENTUM, HodgS. 



Hitherto only recorded from China, I believe, by MM. 

 David and Oustalet, the former of whom found it very rare 

 in the mountainous parts of the extreme S.W. It is one of 

 the birds, however, which I have long been expecting to hear 

 of from other parts of China; I have now a male from 

 Kuatun (17.5.96) from Messrs. La Touche and Rickett. 

 I think it unadvisable to separate this from the Himalayan 

 species, although both above and below it is decidedly greyer, 

 difi'ering exactly as Parus ater, across the Channel, does from 

 the English Coal-Tit. Instead of being olive-brown above, 

 it is decidedly ashy, except on the wings and tail ; and there 

 is much less fulvous on the underparts — only a tint of it, 

 indeed. 



