43 Fringilmtda Nemoricola et Sordida. 



" Male in Winter. — Forehead dusky brown, all the feathers 

 margined pale ; top of head and ear-coverts, uniform rufous 

 brown ; nape and neck, ashy brown ; back, dark brown ; the 

 feathers margined pale rufous ; rump, pure ashy ; upper tail 

 coverts, blackish, tipped and margined white ; wings and tail, 

 dusky, the secondaries being narrowly, the tertiaries more 

 broadly edged pale brown, and tipped whitish ; wing coverts 

 brownish-dusky in the centre, tipped whitish, and forming 

 two conspicuous bands ; all the tail feathers are margined 

 pale ; below, uniform dull ashy, albescent on the vent ; lower 

 tail coverts dusky, broadly margined, and tipped with pure 

 white. 1^\\Q female has the entire top of the head light brown, 

 the feathers being dusky centrally ; the ear-coverts are pale ; 

 otherwise it is colored like the male. 



" The specimens which I procured in summer, are more uni- 

 form dusky brown above, having all the pale edgings of the 

 feathers much less distinct, and the whitish bands on the 

 wing coverts scarcely conspicuous. 



■' Length of wing, 31 inches ; tail, 2| inches ; bill, dusky brown 

 above, pale on the vase and below ; legs, greyish brown ; irides, 

 fleshy brown. 



'' The form of the bill is scarcely different from that of typical 

 Montifringilla, but the hind claw is remarkably longer, and like 

 all the other claws very slender, and more similar to those of 

 Fringilauda than to those of the former genus. 



" I have not succeeded in identifying this species, nor have I 

 -seen specimens of it in any of the European museums, though it 

 is comparatively a common bird." 



Subsequently, I procured two specimens labelled Sordida by 

 Dr. Stoliczka, and comparing these with numerous other speci- 

 mens from different parts of the North-Western Himalayas, arrived 

 at the conclusion, as I believe several other ornithologists did, that 

 Sm'dida was not a good species. 



Having now compared a very large series of these birds, name- 

 ly, sixty-eight from Simla, Kotegurh, Kotekhaie, Kooloo, Bussa- 

 hii-, the Valley of the Sutledge from Chini to Eampoor, &c,, 

 with sixteen procured in the immediate neighbourhood of Dar- 

 jeeling, I have come to the conclusion that, though not a good 

 species in the sense that Dr. Stoliczka understood it, Sordida is 

 yet the first name applied to a species not hitherto discrimi- 

 nated, but for all that distinct from Hodgson^s Nemoricola. The 

 true Nemoricola does not, to the best of my belief, occur at all in 

 the south-western parts of Thibet, or to the north of Cashmere ; 

 the specimens to which Dr. Stoliczka assigned the name as there 

 occurring being merely other stages of plumage of his Sordida, 



