300 NOVELTIES. 



towards the tip than in this latter species ; but it lias a regular 

 Prionochilus bill with the bulge at the angle of the gonys in 

 the lower mandible (which is exaggerated in Piprisoma and 

 only indicated in Pachyglossa) and not the nearly uniform 

 unbroken curve of the lower mandible in Dicceum. 



Geronticus Davisoni, Sp. Nov. 



Like papillosus, Tern-, but very much larger ; head black with brownish 

 warts on anterior portion of head only ; a broad white ring of naked 

 skin across the throat and round the nape. 



It seems incredible that so large, handsome, and strongly 

 characterised a species should be still undescribed, but I can 

 find no mention of it in Mr. Gray's hand list, or in the lt Mu- 

 seum Des Pays-Bas," and I am therefore constrained to describe 

 it under the name of its discoverer, Mr. William Davison, who 

 shot a couple last January on the banks of the Pakchan Es- 

 tuary in the extreme south of the Tenasserim Provinces. 



Both specimens were adult males. The following are their 

 dimensions and description : — Length, 32 to 32*5; expanse, 55*5 

 to 58; wing, 16'5 to 17; tail, from vent, 8'25 to 8'5 ; tarsus, 

 3-62 to 365 ; bare portion of tibia, 2*5 ; bill, from gape, 7*1 to 

 7-2 ; weight, 3-5 lbs. to 4tbs. 



The legs and feet are coral red ; the irides bright orange ; the 

 bill is very dark plumbeous, blue at base, shading to a dull 

 ochraceous clay color towards the tip ; the head is black, the 

 anterior portion only, covered with small brown warts, becoming 

 obsolete on the crown and occiput ; a broad white band of naked 

 skin encircles the neck ; it stretches across the throat beginning 

 opposite the ends of the maxilla, runs up the lower margin of 

 the ear apertures, and across the nape, being prolonged up- 

 wards into an arrow-head point on the occiput, where it is 

 strongly tinged with blue. 



The whole of the feathered portion of the neck, the breast, 

 and the entire lower parts of the body, the back, scapulars and 

 tertials are precisely similar to the same parts in papillosus ; 

 a brown of somewhat varying shades tinged especially on the 

 scapulars, tertials, rump, and upper and lower tail-coverts, 

 with a metallic greenish lustre ; the wings and tail are like- 

 wise precisely as in that species with the same blue and green- 

 ish blue metallic lustre, and with the same snowy white patch, 

 though somewhat less in extent, above the elbow joint. 



The pure white naked ring round the head or rather round 

 the neck just where this joins the head makes this bird very 

 conspicuous in life. Mr. Davison says that they were not 

 rare but were excessively wary. Their habits appear to be 



