106 GEOCICHLA DISSIMILIS, BLYTH. 



I have no doubt that the bird that now does duty as one 

 of those six, was the identical bird referred to in the passage 

 above quoted. No doubt, as often happened in the old crowded 

 quarters, this specimen got lost, and so was not mounted 

 along with the others. Then, after Blytlr's departure, this 

 specimen was found up at the time of Mr. Cai'leylle's famous 

 revision of the ornithological collection, and he then attached 

 to it a paper ticket (or somebody else did, the ticket is not in 

 Blytlr's hand-writing. I have compared it carefully with letters 

 of his.) 



Geocichla cardis,* Tern. 

 G. dissimilis, Bl. 

 Cal. Bot. Garden. 



Then later, when things were re-arranged, this bird being 

 found to answer to Blytlr's description, the little black ticket 

 originally attached to the board, and bearing distinctly the 

 words " male and female, Bengal and Nepal," was attached 

 to the single stand on which this one bird had been mounted — 

 a stand which could not have been labelled as bearing ci male 

 and female," as it could not possibly have contained more than 

 a single bird. 



It may be well to note that my origiual type had the whole 

 throat and breast a much duller colour than adults that I have 

 subsequently received from Assam, and than is figured in the 

 P. Z. S., 1879, PI. LXIV. It is much more, in fact, like 

 the breast in the figure of Turdus javanicus, Ibis, 1875, PI. 

 VIII, and with the dark color descending considerably lower 

 than is shown in the plate in the P. Z. S. though not quite 

 so low as in javanicus. 



Further I may note that the coloration of the rufous parts 

 in the plate in the P. Z. S. is not nearly a sufficiently intense 

 ferruginous for old adults, and the female there depicted in 

 the background must have been a very young one, for in the 

 old female the ferruginous is as intense as in the old male. 

 The great difference being in the upper surface, which in the 

 female is a fine dark olive brown, becoming slightly greyish 

 on the rump, upper tail-coverts and tail, and in the male black 

 on the head and nape, and elsewhere a dark iron grey much as 

 in dark specimens of Hypsipetes psaroides ; it is in fact a very 

 dark edition of the upper surface of old male unicolor, just as the 

 back of the female dissimilis is a darker edition of that of the 

 old female unicolor. 



* Some one has scratched out the word " cardis" with a blue pencil. The ticket, 

 though not new, ia twenty years younger at least than the specimen. 



