172 REMARKS ON THE GENUS PERICROCOTUS. 



he Lave been referring to the female of igneus, for in that the 

 grey is not near so dark as in many southern specimens of 

 peregrinus. 



Flagrans, Boie, in my opinion, is either a distinct represen- 

 tative species yet to be identified in Borneo or Sumatra, or 

 it may be that a race of peregrinus occurs there, which is still 

 darker than the southern Indian one ; and 1 have specimens of 

 this latter now before me in which the head and back are 

 nearly black, and the rump and lower parts distinctly t{ igneus 

 nee aurantius." 



Anyhow our present bird is not flagrans. 



Xanthogaster, Raffles, (Tr. L. S., XIII, p. 309, 1822) has been 

 assigned by Moore and Horsfield, (Cat. B. Mus., B. S. C, p. 

 142) et auct., to igneus, Blyth,but this of course is erroneous, as 

 xanthogaster is a female of the speciosus type, while igneus has a 

 female of the peregrinus tj'pe. 



Mr. Sharpe has united xanthogaster (S. F., IV., p. 208) with 

 ardens, Boie, and this seems to be the general view now-a-days, 

 and it is at any rate reasonable, but really this latter species 

 is still more or less a myth. 



All we have on record about it in the way of original and 

 authentic description is Bonaparte's curt remark : " Ex Sumatra 

 Similis P.fiammece, sed minor." Such descriptions fix nothing 

 until the avifauna of a locality has been exhaustively worked, 

 and you are able to say it must be so and so, because nothing 

 else occurs here which it could possibly be. 



That Raffles, op. cit., p. 310, gives another bird as " Turdus 

 Jlammeus (Muscicapa flammea, Gmel.") which might well be the 

 male of his xanthogaster, tells both ways — most likely his flam- 

 meus is ardens $ , but then would he call the female a Lanius 

 and the male Turdus ? It is impossible to say ; and until 

 Sumatra has been exhaustively worked, it is equally impossible 

 to say with certainty whether xanthogaster does equal ardens 

 or not; for all we know xanthogaster may be a distinct 

 and smaller species than what Raffles called flammeus, which 

 latter again may be a third species, though it seems fair to as- 

 sume for the present that it at any rate is the same as 

 ardens* 



Even as to ardens, as before remarked, we have no cer- 

 tainty. 



There is the bird I formerly identified as ardens, from 

 Tenasserim and the Malay Peniusular, the male with the 



* There are a few other names that I cannot identify — Muscicapa suhflava, Vieillot, 

 often given as a synonym of P. flammeus which it may be. Phoenicornis? aureo- 

 pygia, Hay, Madr. Journ., No. XXXI., p. 158, from Hong Kong — the original des- 

 cription of which is not accessible to me. Pericrocotus rubricinctus, Blyth, mentioned 

 by Bonaparte (Consp., I ; p. 357) but which I have failed to trace. 



