336 BIRDS OCCURRING IN INDIA NOT DESCRIBED 



are dingy reddish buff; the lesser and median lower wing- 

 coverts are reddish buff, more or less centred with brown, and 

 the greater lower wing-coverts are mingled white and blackish 

 brown. The lineation of the lower surface is more obscure and 

 ill-defined than in what I take to be later forms of this same 

 stage. In the next form of this stage, every feather of the 

 head, nape, and upper back is brown, (a sort hair brown,) 

 darker than in the form above described, with a conspicuous 

 narrow fulvous central stripe. All the wing-coverts and sca- 

 pulars are tipped with fulvous or fulvous white; the lesser 

 ones, narrowly, in fact with a mere spot at the tip ; the larger 

 ones, more broadly; the rump, back, and upper tail-coverts 

 areas above described; but the tail is a dingy wood brown, 

 without any trace of bars, and broadly tipped with fulvous 

 white. 



The secondaries are conspicuously tipped with white or ful- 

 vous white ; the chin, throat, and ear-coverts are unstreaked 

 fulvous ; the breast and upper two-thirds of the abdomen are 

 a warm, somewhat purplish, brown, with conspicuous, well 

 defined narrow central fulvous stripes ; the lesser and me- 

 dian lower wing-coverts are more mingled with brown than in 

 the specimen above described ; and the larger lower coverts are 

 greyish white, mottled with blackish brown ; and the axillaries, 

 which in tbe form first described, were reddish buff, mottled 

 with brown, are in this one similar to the feathers of the 

 breast. In another form of this stage, the head and back 

 resemble tbe form first described ; the tail and wings, the 

 second ; while the chin, throat and ear-coverts are very pale 

 buff, and the breast and abdomen are of the same colour, each 

 feather narrowly margined vsith the warm purplish brown. 



Specimens in this stage vary greatly, independent of the 

 points noted above ; in the colour of the thighs, vent, and lower 

 tail-coverts, (which in some are nearly white, in others rufous 

 buff,) and in the extent and purity of the white, or fulvous 

 white tipping, to the tail and secondaries. The difficulty is, 

 that these various differences do not go together. If the birds 

 be arranged in a series, with reference io the comparative 

 width of the central stripes of the breast feathers, which width 

 varies, as above noticed, from less than one-fifth to nearly four- 

 fifths of the total width of the feathers ; and then turned back 

 upwards, no corresponding progression in the lineation of the 

 upper surface is observable, and in order to obtain a regular 

 series, according to the amount and extent of the lineations of 

 the upper feathers, a totally different arrangement will be 

 necessary. Adopting either of these arrangements, we shall 

 still have no regular progression in the extent or purity of 



