186 BIRDS OF TENASSEEIM. 



margins of the others ; quills and greater coverts blackish brown ; 

 the former with excessively narrow paler margins on the outer 

 webs, scarcely perceptible. 



The female is a dull olive green above ; the wings pale hair 

 brown ; the coverts margined with olive green ; the quills, especi- 

 ally some of the secondaries, with more rufescent olive ; the tail 

 blackish brown with bluish reflections, margined towards the 

 bases with olive, and the exterior tail feathers broadly, and 

 the rest, excepting the central tail feathers which have a mere 

 trace of it, more and more narrowly margined at the tips with 

 dull white ; entire lower parts pale greenish yellow; purer yel- 

 low on the middle of the abdomen, and more richly colored, per- 

 haps with the faintest tinge of orange, on the breast. 



233 iter.— Anthreptes malaccensis, Scop. (37). 



Amherst ; Tliayetchoung ; Shymotee ; Mergui ; Patoe Island ; Sadyin ; Choun- 

 pyah. 



Common along and near the coast line southwards from 

 Amherst. 



[I never met with this species north of Amherst ; and thence 

 southwards until Mergui is reached the species must be 

 accounted a rare one. Southwards from Mergui, in our 

 own territory, and along the western coast of the Malayan 

 Peninsula to its extremity at Johore, it is one of the most, 

 if not actually the most, common of all the Sunbirds, occurring 

 in numbers in every garden and cocoanut plantation, amongst 

 the mangroves that fringe the shores, and almost wherever 

 flowers are to be seen ; only it seems to shun the denser por- 

 tions of the forest and the dense scrub jungle. 



Both this species and nuchalis, which is truly an Anthreptes 

 in all its habits, differ somewhat from the true Honeysuckers, 

 in feeding more largely on insects, and less on nectar, and in 

 making more use of their feet and less of their wings when 

 moving about among the flowers and foliage. 



The male of this species occasionally utters a feeble song, 

 if its few twittering notes can be dignified by this appellation, 

 but it is very distinctly more of a song than the chirruping 

 of an JEthopgga. — W. D.] 



Although in Tenasserim this species has not yet been observed 

 north of Amherst, yet it occurs, I know, along the Arracan 

 coast, and I have received specimens of it from Akyab. It seems 

 to me to be a sea-coast loving bird, and hence probably does not 

 get above Amherst, the most northerly point on the Tenasserim 

 coast, to which the pure sea extends ; above that the whole head 

 of the Gulf of Martaban is just a great common estuary of a 

 number of huge rivers. Again, the whole southern coast of 



