568 Mr. L. W. Wigleswortli on the Polynesian 



subjected to a more confused interchange of names. In 

 1848 Peale described the species found by him in Samoa as 

 Ptilinopus fasciatus. Five years later appeared the ' Voyage 

 au Pole Sud/ when Jacquinot and Pucheran named the 

 Fijian species Kurukuru Clementines, but gave a very trivial 

 description, referring one to the fuller account given in the 

 ' Voyage de la Venus ' of the Kurukuru de Clementine by 

 Des Murs and Prevost. The latter bird, however, is the 

 Samoan species again, for specimens were obtained from 

 Samoa in one of these voyages, and the words about a " tache 

 on plastron noir^tre,'' followed by the " rouge marron " of 

 the abdomen, and the orange under tail-coverts and yellow 

 apical band of the tail, readily identify it with the species from 

 those islands. Bonaparte united the two species as P. clemen- 

 tincB. Subsequently Drs. Hartlaub and Finsch, who, when 

 writing the ' Ornithologie Centralpolynesiens,^ had only speci- 

 mens from the Fiji Islands and Uea before them, failed to see 

 their distinctness from Peale's bird, and united the Fijian 

 and Samoan species under the title P. fasciatus. Mr. Layard 

 was the first to point out the characters of the three Central- 

 Polynesian Pigeons (P. Z. S. 1876, pp. 495, 502), but unfortu- 

 nately gave the Samoan bird the name of P. apicalis, Bp. 

 ( = P. fasciatus, jr.) , and Peale's name, P. fasciatus, to that 

 belonging to Fiji. Finally Mr. Elliot renamed the Samoan 

 species P. pictiventris. 



Specimens from all the three groups (for at one time 

 Dr. Graffe included the Tongan species with the other 

 two) have thus been labelled sometimes with the right, but 

 more often with the wrong, name ; and when it is remembered 

 that it is almost, if not quite, impossible to distinguish the 

 immature birds one from another, it will be understood in 

 what manner many erroneous localities have come to be 

 assigned to them. After six months' uninterrupted study 

 of the Polynesian Pigeons, I think I am able to give the 

 localities correctly, so far as they have been recorded ; but 

 there are doubtless lying in museums many specimens from 

 other localities which are unknown to me. The present 



