REMARKS ON THE GENUS PERICROCOTUS. 191 



scapulars moderately dark brown, with an olive and grey tinge ; 

 ear-coverts paler, and greyer ; rump and upper tail-coverts 

 brilliant fiery scarlet, as in southern peregrinus ; wings deep 

 hair brown blackish about the carpus and the wingletj wing- 

 band extending on the outer webs over bases of fifth and suc- 

 ceeding primaries, and all the secondaries, bright flammeous 

 orange; four central tail feathers blackish brown, laterals flame- 

 coloured, but with the basal l-4thor l-5th deep brown. 



Such is the female of igneus, shot in company with the male, 

 and sex ascertained by dissection. 



Now though Strickland's female minutus is clearly of the 

 same type, his description does not accurately represent our 

 birds. It may be that he wrote carelessly, it may be that he had 

 a female peregrinus of the eastern type and not the true female 

 of his minutus before him, or it may be that his minutus is 

 distinct, and while the males closely resemble each other the 

 female differ. But I incline to the second hypothesis, as his des- 

 cription of the male is very accurate, while his description of 

 the female fits female peregrinus (highly colored race) perfect- 

 ly. He sa} r s : " ? . Grey above ; wings and tail black, marked 

 with orange yellow ; rump and upper tail-coverts orange scarlet ; 

 lores, chin, and lower parts yellowish.'" 



You canuot call female igneus grey above ; it is a fairly dark 

 brown with an olivaceous grey shade doubtless, but still brown, 

 peregrinus is grev. Then the lores chin, &c, are yellowish in 

 peregrinus, but in igneus they are bright orange, with a conspi- 

 cuous dusky line through the lores. Lastly, peregrinus has no 

 frontal band, while igneus has, and this though narrow so 

 brightly colored that it could not have escaped Strickland. 



Writers have hitherto so lumped up and confused flagrans, 

 Boie, (which, as I have already explained, is in my opinion 

 a species still to be re-discovered of the peregrinus type, the 

 male with head and back unglossed black), ardens of Boie 

 (which has in the male the glossy black head and back and the 

 second wing patch and a female like speciostis, though with less 

 yellow on the forehead,) and the present species (which has in 

 the male the glossy black head and back, no second wing patch, 

 and a female of the peregrinus type) that it is impossible to 

 make out who has been referring to what ; but if any one has 

 meant to say that igneus does not in its female approximate to 

 peregrinus then he is clearly wrong, as the fiery scarlet rump 

 separates its female from the females of speciosus, elegans, ar- 

 dens, &c, and distinctly unites it which the female of pereginus, 

 though the two differ inter se as above explained. 



We have as yet only obtained igneus within our limits in the 

 extreme south of the Teuasserim Provinces in the neighbourhood 



