98 HIEllOCOCCYX nisicolor. 



transversely barred. Even iu the nestling the sides and 

 flanks often exhibit arrow-head marks which are very like bars, 

 and before the young bird has been 5 months from the nest, 

 long before it has assumed the adult plumage, before the rufous 

 tippings have been worn away from the feathers of the upper 

 surface, the sides have become distinctly barred. 



Now in nisicolor, old or young, there is never any barring 

 on the sides or abdomen ; the markings are always longitudinal 

 and streaky. 



Then there is the difference in colour ; the upper surface 

 alike in old and young is conspicuously darker in nisicolor. 

 In the young of this latter the upper surface is a deep liver- 

 brown, the head darker and duskier. 



In the adult it is a deep slatey blue, almost black on the 

 head in freshly moulted birds. 



As a broad general rule too, the rufous on the lower surface 

 in nisicolor is always deeper, and perhaps, I should say, more 

 ferruginous, but this is not an absolute distinction, as I have 

 one old nisicolor no deeper in colour than one particularly richly 

 colored varius. 



I do not think any one comparing the birds carefully could 

 unite nisicolor and varius. 



At present I only know for certain of the occurrence of this 

 species in Sikhim, Bhotan, the Khasia Hills, the Hills of 

 Northern Tenasserim, and the plains immediately west of these 

 during the cold season. 



The following are the dimensions and colours of the soft 

 parts of a fine male, killed on the Thatoue plains last 

 December : — 

 Length, 11*7 ; expanse, 19*75 ; tail, 6*2 ; vving, 7'0; tarsus, 0*8 ; 

 weight, 4 ounces. 



The legs, feet, claws and eyelids, bright yellow; gape, greenish 

 yellow, lower mandible and region of nostrils, pale green ; upper 

 mandible horny black ; irides orange red. 



It is quite true, that in the Zoological Society's copy of the 

 drawings as well as in the British Museum ones, to which 

 Mr. Blyth refers, Mr. Hodgson figures the iris as white, and 

 we know how extremely accurate his drawings usually are,* 

 still both in the specimen above referred to shot by Davison 

 and in another shot by myself near Darjeeling (in the lower 

 valleys below which the bird is not rare) the irides were 

 orange red, thus differing from variits, of which I find that 

 I have on upwards of 30 specimens recorded the irides as, 



* There is internal evidence to show that this plate was taken from a skin. 

 It has on its reverse none of those special details which Mr. Hodgson always 

 recorded when dealing with a fresh bird, 



