260 REMARKS ON SOME SPECIES OF THE 



Neither of our larger species are rufula, both have the 

 striae of the lower surface well marked, both have the rump 

 band narrower, and in the fully plumaged adult uniform in 

 tint and not paling towards the tail, and our Himalayan and 

 Tenasserim Hill form is considerably smaller. 



I am at a loss to understand the grounds on which Mr. 

 Swinhoe (P. Z. S., 1871., p. 346) remarks that he has " now no 

 doubt that both Linnaeus and Pallas applied their names to 

 rufula, Tern/' As Naumaun, Selys de Longchamps, and others 

 have repeatedly pointed out alpestris from the Altai Mountains 

 differs un variably from rufula in the greyer ear-coverts, in the 

 narrower (almost obsolete) neck band, in the nearly uniform 

 rump, not paling to buffy white towards the tail, and 

 in the invariably much more strongly marked stria? of the 

 lower parts. 



I may here draw attention to the fact that, though these birds 

 are all great wanderers at other seasons, so that two and three 

 species may be shot together during the autumn and winter 

 (e. g., erytkropygia and our Himalayan species) they are I 

 believe very true to their breeding haunts ; rufula and alpestris 

 may very likely have been shot out of apparently the same 

 flight in Russia or Central Asia, but I venture to predict that 

 if only breeding birds from the Altai on the one baud, and the 

 Mountains of Greece and Palestine on the other, be compared, 

 they will invariably present the above characteristic 

 differences. 



L. japonica, Tem. & Schl. (Faun. Jap. 34, t. XI, 1850) 

 from Japan and Amoy is a smaller species than the preceding. 

 Length, 7'25 ; wing, 4*75 ; tail, 3*84 ; fork, 2'1 : in fact much 

 the same size as our Himalayan birds, but with a shorter tail. 



It has a blackish triangular patch in front of the eyes. The 

 under surface very strongly striated, much more so than in 

 any of our Himalayan birds, and the broad rump band, which 

 is more the colour of, though paler than, that of erytkropygia, has 

 narrow black or blackish shaft stripes to the feathers. This 

 latter is observable, though the stripes are here much finer, in 

 many .young and not fully plumaged specimens of our 

 Himalayan birds, but in these the rump baud is much nar- 

 rower and paler ; in the young at times this band is not more 

 than 05, even in the adults it never exceeds 1*0 and rarely 0*9, 

 while in one specimen of japonica it is 1*1, and Mr. Swinhoe 

 gives it as 1*2. 



L. domicella, Hartl. & Finsch. (O.Afr., 143) of South- 

 ern and Central Africa is a minature of melanocrissa, with 

 much paler lower surface, the adults distinguishable at a glance 



