414 NOTES. 



Trochalopteron Austeni, Jerdon apud Godwin-Aus- 

 ten, Joura. As. Soc, Beng., 1870, p. 105. 



Description. — Head, nape, and sides of the neck rich rusty 

 brown, each feather with a paler shaft ; back and uropygium 

 olive brown, tinged with the colouring of the head but devoid of 

 pale shafts ; middle pair of rectrices and outer edges of quills 

 above deep rich ferruginous ; remaining rectrices dark brown, 

 tipped with pure white, the central pairs more or less edged 

 with the color of the middle pair. General color of the under 

 surface of thf body similar to that of the head, but each feather 

 terminated by an albescent border and a penultimate brown band, 

 most prominent on the breast; ventral feathers almost entirely 

 albescent, with narrow brown terminal edgiugs ; under tail and 

 wing-coverts tawny ferruginous, the former faintly tipped with 

 albescent ; major wing-coverts and some of the tertiaries with 

 terminal albescent drops; bill black; legs brown. Wing, 3|; 

 tail, 4f ; tarsus, 1 T V ; bill from gape, T 7 W . The pale central streak- 

 ing of the head and neck-plumage varies in degree in each in- 

 dividual. 



This species was detected by Major Godwin-Austen on Heng- 

 dan Peak, in the North Cachar hills, at about 7,000 feet of 

 elevation. — Jerdon, Ibis, 1872, p. 304. 



lot**. 



Mr. Davison remarks in a recent letter : " It is very curi- 

 ous how in some species the colour of the iris differs persistent- 

 ly in the two sexes. 



" This difference has been already noticed in the case of the 

 Singhalese Pluenicophaes pyrrhocephalus, and I find it equally 

 existing in Rhodopytes erythrognathus. In this latter the iris 

 of the male is pale blue, while in the female it is bright 

 yellow. 



"Again in Dichoceros bicornis, the male has the iris blood 

 red, while in the female it is opalescent white." 



It may be well to notice that Mr. Brooks now concurs 

 in the view I have maintained from the first, viz., that Phceni- 

 copterus Andersoni, Brooks, described in the Proceedings of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal for January 1875, is merely a non- 

 adult stage of P. antiquorum or roseus, whichever be the name 

 under which the well-known European and African species 

 should stand. 



