486 MEGALAIMA INCOGNITA, Hume, 



the case, then it would be quite in accordance with my views to 

 suppress G. amabilis, but according to the common practice, 

 e. g., Ooracias vndica and ajfjinis, it should be retained. 



I cannot at present accept the view that the rufous collar 

 disappears with age. I have examined more than twenty 

 specimens of males from the Straits, and not one of these 

 wants the rufous collar. It is against all probabilities that out 

 of this large number not one should have been an old bird. 



I may add, for what it is worth, that specimens from Amherst 

 (I have only two males, one a nestling, with a tail about 1 inch 

 in length and a still shorter bill, the other an adult) rather 

 favor the view of the gradual local grading of a collared 

 into a collarless race. The nestling has only an imperfect 

 very narrow collar, one or two of the blue feathers of the back 

 of the neck, however, exhibiting, when lifted, a slight rufous 

 tinge. In the adult the collar is perfect, but still very narrow, 

 far narrower, I may say strikingly narrower, than in any of 

 our large Straits' series. Amherst is some 250 miles south 

 of the locality in which the type of amabilis was procured, and 

 in its physical conditions much more nearly assimilates to the 

 Straits than to the dry Red pine- clad hills on the extreme 

 north of Pegu. 



One more point I gather from the comparison of these two 

 specimens, viz., that the collar is better developed in the adult 

 than in the young ; and this too I take to be the true lesson to 

 be read in the nestling referred to by Mr. Sharpe, and not as 

 he holds, that the collar disappears by age. 



A. 0. H, 



Megalaima incognita, Hume. 



My friend, Captain Gr. F. L. Marshall, writes as follows : — 

 " Is not your new Barbet, Megalaima incognita ("described in 

 Stray Feathers, Vol. II, p. 442), identical with M. Humei 

 (Marshall), described in the Ibis for 1870, p. 536 ?" The 

 diagnosis does not distinguish between the two, which leads me 

 to think that you overlooked the latter. In the detailed descrip- 

 tion, however, you mention a black superciliary streak and a 

 black cheek stripe. In these points and in the blue washing 

 being more distinct on the throat seem to exist the only differ- 

 ences in colouring between the bird now described and M. Humei. 

 The black supercilium and ear-coverts it has in common with 



