340 BIRDS OF TENASSKRIM. 



This species will be found accurately described under the 

 name of subsignata, S. F., I., 409. 



But I may note that the species is very variable, according, 

 I fancy, to the recency or otherwise of the moult. In some 

 specimens the whole under surface is a dull sordid or slightly 

 brownish white, without the faintest yellow or creamy tinge ; 

 in others the chin, throat, breast, and upper abdomen is a pale, 

 pure almost primrose yellow, and in these birds the ear-coverts 

 have a decided rufescent tinge. Again the amount of spotting 

 on the breast varies greatly. 



I suspect that these birds moult in the spring as well as in 

 the autumn, for Davison caught one on board ship in the Gulf 

 of Martaban on the 29th April, which is obviously jnst freshly 

 moulted, and in which the brightness of the yellow on the 

 lower surface, and of the olive and black on the upper parts, 

 quite surpasses anything I have seen in this species. 



Mr. Dresser, as I think erroneously, unites L. hendersoni, 

 Cass., with this species. The birds that we in India identify 

 as hendersoni are conspicuously different from lanceolata. In 

 the first place adult hendersoni never exhibits any spottings 

 on the throat and upper breast ; adult lanceolata alwavs does. 

 In the second place the bill in hendersoni is decidedly slenderer 

 and more compressed towards the point, if specimens of the 

 same sex are carefully compared. In the third place the black 

 centerings of the feathers of the upper surface extend in adult 

 lanceolata to the upper tail-coverts, which they do not in adult 

 hendersoni. I have ten specimens of the latter and twelve of the 

 former before me, many of them killed in the same month. 



In India, too, the distribution is different. I have never 

 known hendersoni to occur east of Allahabad, nor have I known 

 lanceolata to occur west of the meridian of Calcutta. Lanceo- 

 lata is not very uncommon in Tenasserim; I am pretty con- 

 fident that hendersoni does not occur there at all. 



A great deal of confusion still exists as to these Locustellas. 

 I have just received a letter in regard to them from Mr. 

 Seebohm, from which, though it is a private one, I venture to 

 reproduce extracts, the subject being a most difficult and at 

 the same time generally interesting one. 



Mr. Seebohm says : — 



" Since I wrote to you, Salvin has sent me down the 

 Acrocephali out of the Strickland collections at Cambridge to 

 name, and I find two skins of Locustella rubescens with Blyth's 

 labels attached. These birds are exactly intermediate in colour 

 between young in first plumage of Locustella certhiola, which 

 I shot this autumn at Yen-e-saisk and adult birds of that 

 species, so that I have no hesitation in pronouncing them to 

 be birds in first winter plumage of L, certhiola. 



