HALF OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. 109 



is one that varies very considerably both in depth and shade of 

 colour and in the amount of greyish about the face, according, 

 as I conclude, to age and season. There is no doubt, howevei', 

 that one and all are one and the same species. Whether in 

 Sikkim, Dacca, Tipperah, Pegu, Tenasserim, or the Malay 

 Peninsula you get darker and lighter, more olive or more rufous, 

 birds, or again birds with very grey lores and eye streaks, and 

 others with scarcely a trace of grey, but, to judge from our very 

 large series, the rufous and brighter-colored types predominate 

 southwards, the duller colored and more olivaceous ones north- 

 wards. Blyth's type of abbotti was one of the rather browner 

 duller colored birds — Strickland's apparently one of the bright- 

 er colored and more rufous types. Blyth himself doubted 

 whether Strickland's bird, which Strickland appears to have sent 

 him, was more than a variety of abbotti. He had then seen but 

 very few specimens from any locality. I, with something like a 

 hundred from all parts of Eastern India, Burma, and the Malay 

 Peninsula, from Sikkim to Singapore, have no doubt that the 

 bird is not even a variety, merely one of the better colored 

 types of the species, of which Blyth had two years previously 

 described one of the duller forms as abbotti. 



This supposed species must therefore be removed from our 

 list, reducing the total number of accepted species to 460. 



1 entirely agree with Salvadori that this Trichastoma abbotti 

 vel olivaceum is entirely and absolutely congeneric with his 

 Malacocincla rufiventris which I have from Borneo- But Blyth's 

 Trichastoma rostratum (which by the way is totally distinct 

 from his Alcippe affinis, of both of which I have numerous spe- 

 cimens identified with Blyth's types), is (as indeed is Alcippe 

 affinis) a Malacopterum, a true tree bird, whilst the abbotti group 

 are entirely ground birds. Very probably the generic name 

 Malacocincla ought to be adopted. 



Another bird has also to be excluded from the list which I 

 take shame for ever having entered, and that is Astur cucu- 

 loides. Long ago we obtained a small adult Hawk precisely 

 resembling Mr. Sharpe's figure of this species, B. M. Cat., I, 

 pi. 4., fig. 2. It was accepted as cuculoides and put aside with- 

 out examination. Recently, having occasion to examine it, its 

 thin tarsi and long toes showed it at once to be an Accipiter, and 

 further going into the subject, I entertain no doubt that it is a 

 very pale and old example of Accipiter stevensoni, Gurney. This 

 adult is conspicuously distinct from any that I have ever seen 

 of either the true virgatus or the Sikkim gularis {vide Gurney, 

 S. F., VIII., 443) ; but I confess that I have not yet sufficiently 

 mastered this species to make sure whether or no any of the many 

 young Malayan specimens that I have entered as virgatus 



