286 NOTES. 



or greyish metallic lustre. In some lights the tail also has a 

 slightly bronzy lustre. ' The primaries have no metallic lustre 

 and are almost jet black. 



In my note on the Chinese Crimson Tragopan (S. F., VIII., 

 201) I said in a footnote, on the authority of Major Cock's 

 letter, that the wattles of the Mishmi specimen were said to be 

 yellow. Captain H. Stevens, of the 42nd N. I., who was 

 the original discoverer of the species, now writes : " I notice 

 that the wattles are said to have been yellow. This is a mis- 

 take. I kept the bird for over a year in a cage in my verandah. 

 It had light blue horns and dark blue wattles, with crimson 

 bars. The Mishmis brought two to Sudiya that year ; this 

 one was brought for me in lieu of a Crestless Moonal, a live 

 specimen of which I wanted. I wrote to Colonel Godwin- 

 Austen about it some two years ago; he replied that from my 

 description it must be the Chinese bird. Major Cock, who 

 saw it alive in my verandah, would have it, even after this 

 letter, that it was only the Naga bird in another stage of 

 plumage ; he and I had a bet about it, and this is how the skin 

 came to be sent to Major Marshall whom I have never seen." 



Since my note on the distinctness of the Himalayan 

 Cheelura nudipes was published (ante, p. 230), I have received 

 five more Sikhim specimens, which also entirely want the white 

 frontal band. I have also looked up Hodgson's original plate 

 which contains highly finished paintings of two birds of the 

 species. In neither of them is there the slightest trace of any 

 frontal band. 



In the P. Z. S. for 1878, page 370, the late Mr. A. Anderson 

 figured anddeseribed what he considered a new Prinia under 

 the name of poliocephala. I reproduced his description, 

 S. F. ,VII., 319, and entered it as a doubtfully distinct species, 

 (535 bis) W^my " Tentative List of the Birds of India. - " 



This species was supposed to differ from P. cinereocapilla 

 of Hodgson, first described by Moore, P. Z. S., 1854, p. 77), 

 in having the entire forehead grey like the crown, whereas 

 cinereocapilla had been described as having the nareal and 

 frontal plumes and a streak over and behind the eye of the 

 same rufous as the back, and only the crown grey. 



Mr. Anderson fortified his own opinion by that of Mr. 

 Brooks, who, he said, had informed him that his specimen 

 was not cinereocapilla. 



