REMARKS ON THE GENUS IORA. 437 



(and they are not agreed on these points) has considered 

 characteristic of the females of this or that species. 



There is one apparent, very slight, exception to this general 

 rule, which would scarcely deserve notice, were it not accom- 

 panied by a corresponding general slight difference in the male, 

 and this is that the females of the central portions of the 

 southernmost section of Continental India (which I consider 

 to extend southwards to the 21° N. Lat), e.g., of Saugor, 

 Jhansi, Seonee, Jubbulpore, Raipoor, &c, are apparently per- 

 sistently somewhat paler and duller colored, alike iu winter 

 and summer, and have as a rule at both seasons broader-colored 

 margins to the quills than any other set of females from 

 any other locality, season for season. These diffrences are only 

 just appreciable, the latter is certainly not absolutely constant, 

 and the former may not be so, though I am inclined to believe 

 that it is, but they deserve notice from the fact that the males of 

 this tract also exhibit certain peculiarities connecting them 

 with zeylonica, nigrolntea and tiphia, by whose areas their 

 habitat is cirumscribed. 



As regards young males prior to their moulting in from 

 March to May, into the adult male plumage, / believe that 

 precisely the same may be said ; but I have examined too few 

 specimens to enable me to speak positively. Those that I have 

 examined were undistiuguishable from females. 



In the breeding plumage of the males, on the other hand, 

 the most marked differences are observable. There are, how- 

 ever, only two types ; perhaps it would be more correct to say 

 two extreme forms between which all the others lie. 



The first, which may be called the zeylonica type, has the 

 entire forehead, crown, occiput, nape and back, unbroken, 

 glossy jet black; the rump, greenish yellow; no second white 

 wing bar (the white tips of the greater coverts having dis- 

 appeared) ; no white or colored margins to any of the quills ; 

 and the chin, throat, cheeks, breast, the most intense yellow, 

 in some more gamboge, in some more golden. This piuma^e 

 is exhibited by many males from Cejdon and the southern 

 portions of the Iudian Peninsular, and (for though I have no 

 specimens of my own thence quite typical, I have examined one 

 such from Singapore) by some at any rate from the extreme 

 south of the Malay Peninsular. 



The second, which is the typical tiphia plumage, has the 

 whole upper surface green, shaded but nowhere patched with 

 black ; both wing-bars aud quill margins fairly conspicuous, 

 and the chin, throat, <fcc, much brighter than in the non-breedino- 

 season, but still of a more lemon and less golden yellow 

 than in the southern form. 



