120 NOTES. 



this aside, I believe I cau show good grounds for believing that 

 ignitus, as defined by Sclater, is no stage of Vieilloti. 



We have shot and trapped a very large series of this latter 

 species in the southernmost portion of Tenasserim, over 30 

 males and females of different sizes and ages, and we have 

 obtained no specimen in any way approaching to the description 

 of ignitus. 



But more than this ; we obtained a young male now before 

 me, so young that the crest is only just beginning to show; 

 that the spurs are only 0*41 long against from l'l to 1*6 in 

 adults, and that the longest upper tail-coverts, though dull 

 and abraded, are black and chestnut, like the females. 



Now in this bird, clearly just moulted for the first time from 

 the female plumage, the moult not yet quite complete, the 

 colour of the lower back is precisely as in the adult — the four 

 centre tail-feathers are white, with only a narrow blackish 

 shaft stripe on the basal two-thirds. The entire lower parts 

 are black, only a few vanishing little spots of white on the 

 middle of the abdomen, and three or four of the feathers on each 

 side, (some of the feathers in fact that would later exhibit the 

 white shaft stripes) with an orange ferruginous tinge on the 

 shaft. Just the same colour that in some old adults may be 

 observed tinging the margins of the white shaft stripes, specially 

 towards their tips. 



With this bird before me it seems to me impossible that 

 ignitus, with its pale chestnut flanks varied with purplish black, 

 should be any stage of our bird. 



But besides this, I want to know where this stage is to come 

 from ? In all these birds, as far as my experience goes, there 

 are only two types of plumage, that of the female, which is 

 also that of the young, and that of the male, into which the 

 young males moult direct from the quasi-female garb. 



Now the flanks of the female Vieilloti are in no sense pale 

 chestnut, varied with purplish black. They are blackish brown, 

 each feather broadly margined with white, and in some speci- 

 mens, (but by no means in all), small patches of a chestuut 

 tinge here and there over lay the blackish brown, but in 

 no one of 16 females before me of very different sizes, and con- 

 sequently probably different ages, can the flanks by any stretch 

 of language be described as pale chestnut varied with purplish 

 black. 



Would Mr. Elliot then maintain that ignitus has three distinct 

 types of plumage ? If not, I am at a loss to understand how 

 he considers the bird with the pale chestnut flanks varied with 

 purplish black to be the young of the species of which the 

 male has the flanks black, more or less slashed with white 



