190 



WHITE'S THRUSH. 



Turdus Whitei, EYTON. GOULD. YARRELL. 



TurdvsA Thrush. WhiteiOf White. 



A SPECIMEN of this bird was shot by Lord Malmesbury 

 at Herons Court, his seat near Christchurch, Hampshire, on 

 the 24th. of January, 1828. Another is said to have been 

 killed in the New Forest in the same county, by one of the 

 Forest keepers, but in the absence of names or dates nothing 

 conclusive can be said about it. Closely allied species are 

 natives of remote Japan and Java, and two specimens of the 

 former are related to have been obtained in Europe, on the 

 banks of the Elbe, but as Mr. Yarrell says that the wing 

 of one of them is longer than in the Japanese bird, it may 

 belong to a distinct species. Mr. Yarrell further remarks that 

 one of the two European ones, and one from Japan, appear 

 to be identical with Lord Malmesbury's specimen, and that 

 another from Australia seems to agree with that said to have 

 been procured in the New Forest. If however 'facts are 

 stubborn things' so are measurements; for not to lay stress 

 on the difference between the respective lengths of each 

 individual bird referred to, only two of which, the Australian 

 and the Japanese one, are alike in this respect, the others 

 being more or less widely different from these and from each 

 other, measuring severally twelve inches and a half, twelve 

 inches, eleven inches and a half, and ten inches and three 

 quarters in length, the comparative anatomy, so to call it, 

 of each, is also dissimilar: thus, in Lord Malmesbury's 

 specimen, the second and fourth quill feathers are of equal 

 length, and in the Japanese bird the third and fourth, in the 

 one from Java the second and sixth are equal, in that from 

 Australia the third, fourth, and fifth, are nearly equal, and 

 in the one said to have been met with in the New Forest 

 the third and fifth are equal. Mr. Gould also observes that 



