REMARKS ON THE GENUS 10RA. 431 



tbere is nothing so far to show with certainty which of 

 the supposed races the female, named by Linnaeus " tiphia,"* 

 belonged to. 



Brisson, I have said, gave dimensions, but these will not help 

 us ; for, despite all that has been said about longer bills, greater 

 size, &c., I find that equally long and short wings and bill 

 occur alike in Ceylon, Central Indian Terai, Calcutta, Eastern 

 Assam, Rangoon, Mergui, Malaccan and Johore birds, while 

 of the very few Javan, Sumatrau and Bornean specimens that 

 I have been able to examine, the dimensions fell within those 

 ascertained from a huge series from the above-mentioned and 

 numerous intermediate localities. 



Latham first distinguished the sexes, and he describes the 

 male (in nou-breeding plumage) with the tail blackish, with the 

 edges yellow. The female, he says, differs in being paler and 

 having the tail pale green. He says that the bird is found in 

 the neighbourhood of Calcutta, and is the Chatuck of the 

 Bencralese, so that this fixes the race. 



Buffon's notice is a mere abstract of Edwards*, Brisson's, and 

 Linnceus'. 



Gmelin's tiphia is, of course, Linneeu's, with Buffon and Latham 

 added as references, the latter really satisfactorily fixing, as 

 already noticed for the first time, as far as I can make out, the 

 race to which the name should apply. 



Grnelhr's zeylonica. 



u Green, below yellow; vertex, nape and wings black, the lat- 

 ter with two white bands ; inhabits Ceylon ; bill bluish grey." 



Founded on Brown's figure of the Ceylon Black Cap, and his 

 and Latham's description leave no doubt as to the race which 

 this name was intended to typify. 



Two years later, Latham adopted Gmelin's name zeylonica 

 in his Indian Ornithology, and referred to Gmelin's description. 

 As far as I can make out he intended to unite the Ceylon 

 and Calcutta races as one species, and that he clearly did in his 

 General History, in which, under his own original trivial name 

 of" Green Indian Warbler/' he united tiphia of Lin., zeylonica, 

 Gin., his own Ceylon Warbler, Brisson's, Buffon's, Brown and 

 Edwards' birds. 



Yet Latham had himself separately described the Ceylon 

 race under a distinct title as the Green-rumped Finch in the 

 following terms : — 



" Bill, bluish ; head, hind part of the neck, upper part of the 

 back, and tail, black ; cheeks, chin and the rest of the under- 

 pays, light yellow ; wings, black ; on the coverts, a white spot ; 



* And what may tiphia mean ? I certainly never met tvith the word, and I 

 have failed to find it in any dictionary available to me. 



