MEGALAIMA INCOGNITA., Hume. 487 



M. mysticophanos, with which species M. Humei was long con- 

 founded. 



" If I am correct in believing that your new bird is M. Humei, 

 the locality is very interesting, as all the Museum specimens I 

 have seen had come from Borneo." 



As a fact, though I seem to have failed to make it clear, no 

 two species of the genus are more distinct than Humei and 

 incognita. In my diagnosis it is said of incognita that it has a 

 narrow frontal band and a small patch on the nape, dark crim- 

 son. Now, Humei has no such frontal band, and has the major 

 portion of the crown, a part of the occiput (and no part of the 

 nape), crimson. 



As I have now before me four fine specimens of incognita 

 (3 adults and 1 young) , it may be well to point out more in detail 

 how this new species differs from Humei and other more nearly 

 allied species. 



In the first place, it is a smaller bird altogether than M. 

 Humei, with a bill not more than half the size ; it has a crim- 

 son frontal band, which Humei has not ; it has no tinge of 

 yellow on the forehead, which Humei has ; it has no red on the 

 crown or occiput, only a small red patch about the size of a pea 

 (wanting altogether in the young) at the base of the nape ; it 

 has a marked black supercilium and a marked black mousta- 

 chial stripe. It has a conspicuous ring of bright yellow eyelash 

 feathers. 



It belongs to the same sub-group as Megalaima asiatica, 

 nuchalis, and oorti, and though it differs conspicuously from all of 

 them, more nearly resembles these than any other known Barbet. 



From the first it differs in being somewhat smaller, in havino- 

 a basally more compressed and somewhat slenderer bill, in hav- 

 ing no black coronal band, and only the lores, a narrow frontal 

 band, and a small nuchal patch crimson, in having conspicuous 

 black superciliary and moustachial stripes, prolonged above and 

 below and almost meeting behind the ear-coverts, &c. From 

 the two latter it differs in having no yellow (except in the opthal- 

 mic ring) about the head (or indeed anywhere), in the crimson 

 nuchal and pectoral patches being much smaller, and in the 

 former being higher up than in nuchalis and lower down than in 

 oorti, &c. 



There is no possible question as to the distinctness of this 

 species, of which my specimens were obtained in thin tree 

 jungle, (1 and 2) near Amherst, (3) near Karopi, (4) further 

 south, about 5 miles north of Ye. As yet we have not observed 

 it elsewhere in Tenasserim. 



