18/6.] MESSRS. SCLATER AND SALVIN ON PERUVIAN BIRDS. 15 



4. Note on the Spoonbill of the Argentine Republic. By 

 W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S. 



[Received November 17, 1875.] 



It has been said that Spoonbills " obtain their food by shovelling 

 in the mud with their beaks." This is perhaps true of the Euro- 

 pean bird ; the Spoonbills which I have observed feeding certainly 

 obtained their food exclusively from the water, as Flamingoes do. 



In reference to the Rose-coloured Spoonbills of America, I believe 

 ornithologists have been mistaken in referring them all to one species. 



Whether two or only one species existed was a moot question a 

 century ago : it has been decided that there is but one, the Platalea 

 ajaja, and that the paler-plumaged birds, with feathered heads and 

 black eyes, and without the bright wing-spots, the tuft on the 

 breast, horny excrescences on the beak, and other marks, are only 

 immature birds. Now it is quite possible the young of P. ajaja 

 resembles the common Rose-coloured Spoonbill of Buenos Ayres ; 

 but in that country, for one bird with all the characteristic marks of 

 an adult P. ajaja, we meet with not less, I am sure, than two or three 

 hundred examples of the paler bird without any trace of such marks. 



This fact of itself might incline one to believe that there two dis- 

 tinct species, and that the common Platalea of Buenos Ayres inhabits 

 the temperate regions south of the range of the true P. ajaja. 



Other facts confirm me in that opinion. A common Spoonbill 

 was kept tame by a friend of mine seven years, at the end of which 

 time it died without having acquired any of the distinguishing marks 

 of P. ajaja. 



I have dissected three examples of the latter species, and observed 

 in them the curiously formed trachea recently described by Mr. 

 Garrod*. I have sbot perhaps a hundred specimens of the common 

 bird ; for they are extremely abundant with us. Of these I have 

 opened about thirty, but in none of them did I find this form of 

 trachea. I am therefore convinced that we have two distinct 

 species of rose-coloured Spoonbill, inhabiting different portions of 

 the continent. 



5. On Peruvian Birds collected by Mr. Whifcely. By P. L. 

 Sclater, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., and Osbert Salvin, 

 M.A., P.E.S.— Part IX.f 



[Received December 8, 1875.] 



(Plate III.) 



The ninth collection of Mr. Whitely's Peruvian birds, now before 

 us, has been formed in the same district of High Peru as the last 

 was. It contains examples of sixty-five species. 



* P. Z. S. 1875, p. 297. t For Part VIII. see P. Z. S. 1874, p. 677. 



