I9I9'] Oriental Woodpeckers and Barbels, 199 



terminal pale markings almost white, which make this part 

 of the bird look squamated. Between typical specimens of 

 brachyurus and phaioceps it is also easy to distinguish, as the 

 former has the feathers of the throat with the centres of a 

 darker colour than the breast, whilst the latter has them 

 concolorous with it. In the portion of the two birds' 

 habitat where they overlap, both dark- and light-coloured 

 throats are met with, and this obtains over practically the 

 whole of southern Burma, south-western Siam, and the 

 north of peninsular Siam and Burma, 



A very careful examination of the long series which I 

 have had the advantage of consulting, shows that there is 

 no other stable difference of colour in any of the various 

 proposed races which would suffice to distinguish them from 

 any other. At first I was inclined to think tliat Kloss was 

 right in separating the Ceylon bird {lanka) on the ground 

 of its being a l)rigliter bay in colour than those from 

 continental India. Of the sixteen birds from Ceylon in the 

 British Museum collection, three are a very bright bay_, but 

 a hunt amongst skins from elsewhere has produced similar 

 l)riglitly-coloured individuals of yularis from Travancore, 

 Ootacamund, and Madras, and oi phaioceps from Nepal and 

 Assam. This characteristic seems, therefore, to be valueless. 



As regards the barring on the under parts, beyond the 

 fact that as a whole brachrjurus is far more heavily marked 

 than phaioceps, nothing more can be said. There are 

 specimens from Sikkim of the latter form far more heavily 

 marked than are many individuals of brachyurus from 

 Malacca, and throughout the range of Micropternus this 

 character is one which varies to an extraordinary degree. 



Micropternus b. williamsoni is said to differ from other races 

 in having more narrow shaft-streaks on the chin and throat- 

 feathers, no pale shaft-stripes on those feathers, darker 

 breast, dark bars on the tail narrower, and narrower bars on 

 the back and wings. Now all these characters are purely in- 

 dividual and obtain in odd specimens in birds from Sikkim, 

 Assam, Chin Hills, north, south, and central Burma, and 

 Siam itself. But there is one feature of the Siam birds which, 



SEK. XI. — VOL. I. Q 



