104 GEOCICHLA DISSIMILIS, BLYTH. 



This bird, now made to do duty as one of the six specimens 

 entered in the Catalogue, was not amongst these six some years 

 a<ro, but it is one of Blyth's old birds, and it agrees well enough 

 with his description of adult male dissimilis ; and though it 

 was not one of the six catalogued by him as dissimilis, we 

 may accept it, I think, as having been the bird he referred 

 to, and may consequently accept his name for the species. 



But it must be clearly understood that Blyth was entirely 

 abroad about this species. The bird that he considered the 

 female of dissimilis, of which he says he procured some eight or 

 ten in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, were all unicolov, and 

 wherea3 he, owing to this mistake, says, that his dissimilis is 

 not uncommon in the cold season about Calcutta, it is in 

 reality so extremely rare that during ten years collecting in 

 that neighbourhood I have never seen a single specimen, 

 thouorh I have seen scores and scores of unicolor, and indeed 

 neither the museum nor Mr. Parker, nor any of the other 

 collectors in that neighbourhood with whom I am acquainted, 

 have ever obtained a specimen. Indeed but for Blyth's printed 

 remarks, as to what the male of his dissimilis was, all his other 

 remarks and all the six specimens that he himself labelled 

 dissimilis, would prove conclusively that his dissimilis was 

 really unicolor. 



It may be useful to quote his remarks in extenso, J. A. S. B., 

 Vol. XVI., p. 144, Feb. 1847 :— 



"12. — T. dissimilis, nobis ; T. unicolor et T. modestus, nobis 

 passim, as in XI, 460, &c. : Calcutta Thrush, Latham, the 

 female. This bird, as well as the preceding one, is very 

 closely allied to the succeeding group Geocichla; and the 

 mature male of the present species has the whole underparts 

 from the breast, except the medial line of the belly and the 

 lower tail-coverts, which are pure white, of the same bright 

 ferruginous colour as in G. citrinus, G. cyanotics, &c. 



" An approach to the same colouration is exhibited by old 

 males of T. rufulus. The female, however,* shows no sign 

 of this except on the axillaries, and on more or less of the 

 under surface of the wing, yet, before obtaining the male, 

 I had preceived the affinity of this species for the Geocichla ; 

 and it is curious that I procured some eight or ten in the 

 feminine plumage (whether all females, however, I cannot say, 

 for some were only skins), before I succeeded in getting^ 

 male, which, as I all along suspected, proved to be clad in 

 not quite so homely a garb as his mate. The male is indeed 

 rather a handsome Thrush. Length nine inches by fourteen 



* Here he refers to the female unicolor. My tricolor (which we are now agreed 

 to call dissimilis,) at every age in both sexes shows the ferruginous flanks. 



