NOTES ON THE LIST OF THE BIRDS OF INDIA. 181 



351, 351 bis. — No reasons have been assi ceiled for the separa- 

 tion of* the genus Cyanocinclus from Monticola, and I doubt if any 

 sufficient exist. The facts that Mr. G. R. Graj classed the two 

 as separate sub-genera, and that he left cue sub-genus without a 

 name does not prove the two to have an}'^ claims to generic 

 separation. ^ 



399 bis. — Pellorneum nipalensis, Hodgs. — Where is this 

 species described ? I have never been able to find a published 

 description. I rather think the name occurs, but without any 

 description, in the first edition of the British Museum Catalogue 

 of Mr. Hodgson's collections. No such name occurs in "the 

 second edition, and in the first the term appears, if it occurs, 

 as a synonym. I cannot verify this, as the only copy of the 

 Catalogue in Calcutta has been borrowed by a' distinguished 

 naturalist who has omitted to return it, and is deaf to all appeals, 

 and the mere existence of the name in M. S., or the publication 

 of a name without a description, is insufficient even to prove 

 what tlie species is. In S. F., I., 293, Mr. Hume says that 

 Mr._ Hodgson figured and described P. mandeltii as P. nipa- 

 lensis, but gives no reference. I believe that neither figure 

 nor description was ever published, and if so, the correct name 

 for the species is P. mandellii. 



S89.-^Alcippe poiocephala, Jerdon; and 4i57.—Brachypodiuspo- 

 iocepkalus.—With reference to the remarks on p. 79, the follow- 

 ing facts may throw some light upon this name. Swainson used 

 the term Poicephalus {sic) for a genus of parrots, and he subse- 

 quently applied the same term, altered to Poiocephalus, to a 

 Gull and a Flycatcher, as a specific appellation. The Flycatcher 

 was No. 295 — Gulicicapa ceylonensis. Jerdon's Grey-headed 

 Flycatchers, called by him Cryptolopha cinereocapilla, Vieill., in 

 his "■ Birds of India," but entered in his previous Cataloo-ue of 

 South Indian Birds as Cryptolopha poiocephala, Swainson. I 

 do not think there can be much doubt that Jerdon took the 

 names of the Alcippe and Brachypodius from Swainson's term 

 for the Grey-headed Flycatcher, and it is worthy of notice that 

 in the " Birds of India " the same epithet "grey-headed " is 

 applied to both the Flycatchers and the Brachypodius. Whether 

 Jerdon understood poiocephalus to mean grey-headed or not is 

 not, I think, of much importance; but, of course, with all the 

 Indian birds mentioned, the term phceocephalus would be much 

 more appropriate than poliocephahis. 



Swainson's generic name Poicephalus was published in 

 1837. In Gray's " Genera of Birds'' the name appeared 

 as Poiocephalus. Strickland, in a critique on Gray's " Genera " 

 published in the Anuals and Magazine of Natural History for 

 1841, Vol. VII., p. 34, corrected the spelling to Pmcephalus, 



