ON TWO SPECIES OP BATRACHOSTOMUS. 353 



back of the head is black, mottled with bright buff, and the 

 feathers narrowly tipped here and there with rufescent. The 

 whole back, scapulars, and coverts are pale ferruginous, closely 

 freckled with black ; the elongated nuchal feathers have some 

 white spots towards the tips ; the scapulars have mostly black 

 spots at the tip, and the median ones in addition large white 

 patches just above these spots, chiefly on the outer webs, and 

 the secondary greater coverts are tipped and freckled towards 

 their tips with white. The primaries and secondaries are hair 

 brown, banded on the outer webs of the first, freckled in bands 

 on the outer web of the latter, with pale salmon buff. The 

 inner webs of the quills exhibit towards their inner margins 

 three or four pale rufescent or salmon colored spots or imperfect 

 bars. The tail feathers exhibit nine or ten bars alternately pale 

 creamy white ; and pale rufous brown, margined and divided off 

 one from the other by nai'row irregular black bands, and the whole 

 surface freckled over with black. The tertiaries are white or 

 albescent with transverse irregular dark brown bars, and the 

 interspaces more or less freckled with a rather paler brown. I 

 note that the coverts about the shoulder of the wing are deep 

 brown, tipped and margined with rufous, but not freckled or 

 spotted in the same way that the other coverts are. The chin is 

 pale dingy rufescent white, the breast and upper abdomen bright 

 rufous buff, more or less fringed and freckled with black. A 

 certain number of the feathers of the centre of the breast pure 

 white to near the tips, beyond that black and beyond that 

 again a rufous, or a mottled rufous and black fringe. The lower 

 abdomen, vent, and lower tail-coverts creamy white with a black 

 more or less triangular spot at the tip of each feather, much as 

 in Otothrix, and with a bar of the same color on many feathers 

 about one-third of the way up from the tip. There is not a 

 trace of the regular banding on the breast, sides of the neck, 

 and back, so conspicuous in Wolf's figure of Hodgsoni, nor is 

 there the conspicuous white wing band ; moreover the white 

 of the abdomen does not extend higher up in our bird than the 

 level of the tips of the greater coverts when the wing is closed, 

 whereas in Wolf's figure it extends up as high as the carpal 

 joint. Moreover in this young bird, as in the adult, the upper 

 mandible closes regularly over the lower, whereas this is said 

 not to be the case in Otothrix. It may still prove that my casta- 

 neus adult are the old males, Otothrix Hodgsoni of Gray, 

 with its much smaller bill, the adult female (we know it was 

 adult because Hodgson procured it together with its young), 

 my young castaneus, somewhat approaching Otothrix in plum- 



