HYPOCOLIUS AMPELINUS IN SIND. 359 



on the Mazarani Nai, due west of Larkana. The man who 

 brought me the bird said that he found it solitary on a stony 

 hill side. 



After a time the idea dawned upon me that I had seen a 

 figure in the Ibis which somewhat resembled my bird, and 

 when I had an opportunity of comparing the skin with the 

 plate of Hijpocolius ampelinus (Ibis, 1868, PI. V) I had no diffi- 

 culty in identifying the two. The only differences are 

 that the Sind bird is greyer, especially on the head, where in 

 the figure the colour is pale isabelline, the head being repre- 

 sented as pale above as it is below on the chin and throat. This 

 difference may be due to age or to the state of the specimen. 

 In the Sind skin too the tips of the first two primaries 

 are more or less dusky, not white, but this may very possibly 

 have been overlooked by Bonaparte and Von Heuglin. 



Hypocolius ampelinus was first named by Bonaparte in his 

 " Conspectus" from skins in the Leyden Museum, which skins 

 were supposed to have been brought from California. Von 

 Heuglin subsequently obtained from the coast of Abyssinia, near 

 Mosowah, a female skin, to which he gave the name of Ceblepyris 

 isabellina, but of which he published no description. Subsequent- 

 ly Hartlaub appears to have identified Heuglin's specimen with 

 Bonaparte's species, and Heuglin gave a full account and a figure 

 of the bird in the Ibis, in which he stated that the Leyden 

 Museum specimens, like his own, were really, from Abj r ssinia.* 



The bird must be very rare, for it escaped both Mr. Jesse and 

 myself, and the Italian party, Messrs. Antinori, Beccari and 

 Issel, who have since collected on the Abyssinian coast, have not 

 met with it. Besides the types the only specimens of which I 

 can find any notice are that obtained by Heuglin, and one skin 

 in the Turin Museum presented by Botta, the Collector of the 

 Leyden specimens {Ibis, 1870, p. 539). 



Hypocolius is a very curious form. I have already remarked 

 that I felt very doubtful as to its affinities, and both Bonaparte 

 and Heuglin appear to have been equally puzzled. 



Bonaparte in his "Conspectus" gives as usual no definition of 

 the genus ; he merely says of it : Genus forsan ad volucres 

 spectans ; medium quasi inter Colios et Cotingas. The Volucres of 

 Bonaparte were the Pici of some authors ( Scansores and Fissiros- 

 ires of others) the non-passerine group of the insessorial order. 

 He placed the genus in the family Ampelidce, next to the genus 

 ampelis. Heuglin in the Ibis referred it to the Campephaginc?, 

 but in the " Ornithologie Nord Ost Africa's" he placed it in a se- 

 parate sub-family Ampelince with the Campephagince in the Ampe- 



•This however is not certain. All that is known is that the skins were obtained by 

 a traveller named Botta, who had been in North-eastern Africa. Even Houglia'a 

 specimens were not obtained by himself, but sent to him from Mosowah. 



2 x 



