BIRDS OF TENASSERIM. 249 



All the specimens, therefore, that I have noted as solitaria, 

 with the exception of the one female from Burma already 

 referred to, are males. Of course female birds were shot along 

 with these, and some of these must have belonged to the same 

 race as the birds exhibiting red in their plumage, but along 

 with these were also shot numbers of males in every stao-e 

 from the quite young to the perfectly adult bird, exhibiting no 

 vestige of rufous plumage, and some of the females must have 

 belonged to these also ; and I am totally unable to discover any 

 diagnosis by which the females pertaining to the so-called 

 solitaria race can be distinguished from those belonging to the 

 cyana form. 



Amongst the birds that I have recorded as solitaria is a male 

 absolutely identical with one from Grenada in Spain, except in 

 having a chestnut edge to two of the feathers of the lower tail- 

 coverts. Amongst them are also two birds with the whole of 

 the abdomen, vent, lower tail-coverts, sides, axillaries, and wino-. ■ 

 lining, deep chestnut, and all the other specimens are intermedi- 

 ate, as regards the amount of rufous exhibited, between these 

 latter and the specimen first referred to. 



Besides these Tenasserim specimens, I have Indian and 

 Burmese specimens, showing more or less chestnut, generally on 

 the vent and under tail-coverts only, but in one or two cases on 

 the abdomen also, from Diamond Island, Akyab, Thayetmyo, 

 Dacca, Tipperah, Cachar and Sikim, but we have no specimen 

 in our museum obtained west of the imaginary line above 

 referred to, exhibiting any rufous whatsoever in the plumao-e, 

 nor amongst the hundreds of specimens that I have examined 

 from all parts of the empire west of this line have I seen such. 

 It may be well to state for what it is worth that, of the few 

 males killed in the extreme south of Tenasserim, not one but 

 exhibits some trace of rufous, and birds exhibiting rufous have 

 been obtained throughout the whole length of the Tenasserim 

 provinces, but except perhaps in the extreme south, the cyana 

 form seems greatly to predominate ; for instance out of 

 between 30 and 40 specimens obtained by Dr. Armstrong* at 

 Amherst only three exhibited any trace of rufous. 



It appears to me that such evidence as we possess is entirely 

 against the specific distinctness of the eastern race. The 

 females are alike, but within certain geographical limits a certain 

 number of the males, greater or less in different localities 

 within that area, assume a certain amount of chestnut in the 

 lower plumage, varying from a single feather to more than half 

 the plumage. But if Messrs. Sharpe and Dresser's surmise is 

 correct, and the rufous plumage, even in the birds that do 



* Not retained by me, and so not included in the number of our specimens. 



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