OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. 123 



barred with white, suffused with dingy buff about the lesser 

 lower tail coverts where the barrings are closer and narrower 

 than elsewhere; the tibial and tarsal plumes are browner and 

 less black, and they are narrowly and closely, transversely, 

 barred with buffy white, only in the longest of the tibial 

 plumes, which descend quite on to the foot, are the bars a little 

 bolder and purer. The axillaries and entire wing lining are 

 deep brown, strongly barred, transversely, with white, which is 

 rufescent everywhere except on the lower greater primary 

 coverts. Nothing like this has been observable in any of the 

 numerous (say over 100) examples of ptilorhynchus that I have 

 examined. The whole mantle and interscapulary region are 

 brown, darker at the base of the neck and along the lesser wing* 

 coverts, and in the case of many feathers having a distinct 

 purple sheen ; the primaries, except the first two, distinctly 

 barred on the outer webs with three or four ill-defined bands 

 of a paler and more fawny brown. 



In the case of the secondaries and tertiaries there are 

 indistinct traces of narrow dark transverse bands. The tail 

 feathers are narrowly tipped with sordid white, then comes a 

 band of blackish brown 0'9 in width, then a two-inch bar of 

 fawny brown, zigzagily mottled with a darker shade, then an 

 0'9 blackish brown band, then a similar fawny brown darker- 

 mottled band of the same width. Then a third blackish band 

 about 0*7, and then again another of the fawny bands about 

 05. Above that an 0'7 dark band, but not so dark as the 

 preceding one; then an 03 fawny band mottled with white, 

 and then an irregular brown band lighter than any of the 

 preceding, mottling away into the white of the base of the 

 feathers. 



The supposed female is very similar, except that the lores 

 and cheeks and part of the anterior portion of the forehead 

 are grey. There is a feeble and irregular throat stripe. The 

 entire breast, abdomen, and lower parts are white ; the feathers 

 dark shafted, with at least one very broad subterminal blackish 

 brown transverse bar. On the breast this is all ; on the upper 

 abdomen there is a second similar bar higher up, and on some 

 of the feathers of the lower abdomen there is yet a third hio-her 

 up still. The tail is difficult to describe because it consists 

 half of old feathers, greatly abraded, and half of new feathers 

 not yet quite fully grown, but the new portion may be de- 

 scribed as having an 0'2 inch grey tip ; a 2*3 black band, a 2*5 

 grey band mottled darker, a 2*0 inch black band, an 0'4< inch 

 brownish grey baud succeeded by an irregular dark brown 

 band, mottling away into the white of the extreme base of the 

 feather. 



