164 NOTES. 



The Javan form will, of course, stand as alexandri, Linn., 

 if that name be not, as I am disposed to think it ought to be, 

 rejected altogether — Linngeus' diagnosis being utterly value- 

 less, and our only clue to the species intended being his primary 

 citation from the Amoenitates Acad., in which Odhel, as 

 Dr. Finsch has clearly pointed out, gave a good description of 

 a specimen brought from Java by Osbeck. 



The specific synonymy of our Indian species will, therefore, 

 stand somewhat as follows : 



152.— Palaeornis fasciatus, P. L. S. Mull. Suppl.,- 

 S. N„ 74, 1766. 



vibrissa, Bodd. Tabl., P. E., 30,1783. 



pondicerianus, Gm. S. N., I., 325,1788. 



borneus, Wagl., Monogr. Psittac, 510,1832, ? nee. Gm. 



melanorrhynchus, Wagl., ibid. 54, 1832. 



mystaceus, Hodgs., Gr. Zool Miscl., 85,1844, et auct. nee 



Shaw. 

 nigrirostris, Hodgs., Ibid, 

 barbatus, Bly. J. A. S. B., XIX, 233, 1850, et auct. ? 



nee. Gm* 

 osbecki, Borsf. and Moore., Cat. B. Mus., E. I. C, II., 



622, 1856. et auct. nee Lath. 

 javanicus, Jerd. B. of M., I., 262, 1862, et auct. nee. 



Osb. nee. Forst. nee. Gm. 

 lathami, Finsch., Mon. Pap., 66,1868. 



It IS very ungracious to look a gift horse in tlie mouth, and 

 I feel that we ought to be grateful to Messrs. David and 

 Oustalet for their work on the " Birds of China/' At the same 

 time it would not be honest to refrain from expressing a hope 

 that a revised edition may be published at some future period. 

 Great labor has doubtless been bestowed upon the work, and 

 we all know how much Pere David has done for Natural 

 History, and no one who has visited the Paris Museum but 

 will be ready to bear testimony to the courtesy and kindness 

 uniformly displayed to all ornithologists by Monsieur Oustalet, 

 but nevertheless the book that they have jointly produced 

 cannot be said to do justice to either the explorations of the 

 former or the erudition of the latter. 



I do not speak now of the Atlas, the plates in which are 

 possibly the best (bad as they are) that could be produced in 

 Paris at the price. But the text contains so many errors that 



* It is impossible to make certain what Gmelin's var. barbalns with its 

 chestnut lores, really was. 



