1 91 8.] recently collected in Siani, 195 



specimens, which he considered to be male and female from 

 Lower Cochin-Chiua *. The name has not come into use, 

 perhaps because no further examples have attracted the 

 notice of ornithologists, perhaps because Oates (' Birds of 

 Burma/ i. 1883, p. 232) stated that Sharpens types were 

 botli merely females of V. neglecta Hume. My three 

 carefully sexed specimens show that Oates was quite wrong 

 and Sharpe right, and that the species or race is a perfectly 

 good one. 



As the fourth volume of the ' Catalogue of Birds ' is now 

 very rare and frequently inaccessible, and no other account 

 of V. polioptera exists, I shall describe my birds, which are 

 apparently only non-typical in that they are somewhat 

 larger than the original pair. Sharpe's figure is bad, it 

 does not even agree with his description. 



Male. General colour above grey, "slate-grey^' on the 

 head, " deep dull grey" on the rump and upper tail-coverts ; 

 the crown with faint traces of dark shaft-stripes. Least 

 wing-coverts like the back, somewhat darker in part ; 

 median and greater coverts darker than the back, their 

 edges rather paler, or, like the back, with paler edges ; 

 bastard wing- and primary-coverts black, margined with 

 the grey of the back. Primaries black, except the first, 

 variably margined with white or grey and tipped with 

 whitish, most extensively on the inner feathers. Secondaries 

 black, externally grey like the back, the edges and tips 

 whitish. 



Two central tail-feathers " dark dull grey " with sub- 

 terminal oblong patches of black, the tips white, the quills 

 black ; remaining tail-feathers black, tipped with white, 

 which increases in extent towards the outermost where the 

 tip is about 18 mm. long : the pair next the innermost with 

 grey bases and a grey or whitish edge to the outer web; 

 the edges of all the inner webs whitish (and in one bird 

 the outer webs edged with white also) . 



* Lower Cocliin-China (Basse Cocbin-Chhie) is now known as 

 Cocliin-Cliina ; the greater portion of it lies south of the eleventh 

 parallel of latitude, but near Saigon it extends nearly to Lat. 12° N. 



