498 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE AVIFAUNA 



780 quat— Carpophaga palumlboides, Hume. 



This species really has, I find, as Lord Walden said, only 

 twelve tail feathers, but it is not a bit of an Iantluenas for all 

 that. There is a specimen alive here now in Calcutta, and in its 

 mode of holding itself and its broad substantial body it is a typi- 

 cal Carpophaga, and not at all like the more slender and pigeon- 

 like metallica, which, rare as it is, is the only Xanthomas that I 

 have seen alive. 



Lord Walden has just described in the Ann. and Mag. of Nat. 

 Hist, a supposed new nearly allied species. He says : — 

 " lanthmnas nicobarica, n. sp. 



" Entire head, nape, cheeks, and neck dark French grey ; chin 

 and throat albescent grey ; breast and abdomen darker grey 

 than the head ; feathers of the back and sides of the neck tipped 

 with iridescent colors of changing green and pinkish violet ; 

 lower down a broad zone of dark grey feathers with bright green 

 reflections, followed by an interscapular zone of iron grey 

 feathers with pinkish violet reflections ; lesser wing- coverts iron 

 grey, with semilunar terminal pinkish violet edgings ; all the 

 iridescent tints described alter from green to violet or violet to 

 green, according to the light in which the individual is held ; 

 back, uropygium, and upper-tail coverts dark ashy grey, many 

 shades darker than the head, and tinted with iridescent hues ; 

 quills and rectrices almost black ; base of the bill and eyelids 

 bright red. 



« Wing, 9-75 inches; tail, 6-50; bill, from forehead, 1-37 ; 

 tarsus, 1 ; middle toe, with claw, 1*87. 



" Described from examples obtained in Trinkut and Nang- 

 cowry Islands, Nicobars, by Captain Wimberley. 



11 Like Iantluenas palumhoides (Hume), this species possesses 

 twelve rectrices, and is a true Iantluenas. 



ic It is a representative form of the Andaman species, from 

 which it is chiefly distinguished by wanting the pearly-white or 

 greyish-white head, throat, and nape/' 



I cannot think that this is distinct. If it is so, it occurs at 

 the Andamans as well as at the Nicobars. The presence or ab- 

 sence of the pearly-white tinge appears to me to be either indivi- 

 dual or dependent upon sex or age. The type specimen has 

 nothing like the amount shown in the figure in the Ibis ; it is 

 exactly intermediate between that and the form now described 

 as nicobarica. 



I no more believe in this latter than I do in Megapodius trin- 

 kutensis ; and I am confident that when we have as many speci- 



