FROM SIKKIM, BHUTAN, TIBET. 485 



to belong to the above species. Mr. Davison, who had been 

 looking at PrzevalskVs figures, recognized the species ; it is a 

 peculiar rather dull-coloured form, with a ferruginous abdomen. 

 The following is a description : — 



Upper parts of head and hind-neck brownish black ; the 

 feathers with brown edges ; sides of head, including lores, dull 

 brown, passing down into dingy white ; ear-coverts dark brown 

 with whitish mesial streaks ; upper part of back greyish earthy 

 brown, divided by a distinct line from the darker neck : rump 

 rather paler and tinged with ferruginous ; scapulars blackish 

 with the broad margins of grejish brown, tinged with 

 rufous ; quills and wing-coverts brownish black, but secondaries 

 (tertiaries) dark brown ; the margins of the secondaries earthy 

 grey, those of the coverts brown ; tail feathers blackish, 

 central pair browner ; chin dirty white, passing into pale brown 

 on the throat ; all the feathers, including those on both sides 

 below the ear-coverts, with blackish spots near the tips ; breast 

 earthy brown with a ferruginous wash ; abdomen similar at 

 first, but paler, divided by a distinct line from the breast, and 

 becoming distinctly ferruginous behind ; bill and legs in the 

 dried skin brown. Wing, 5'7 ;* tail 43 ; tarsus, 1*45; culmen, 

 1*1 ; bill from nostril, 0*55. 



In the male, represented on Mr. Rowley's plate (a very poor 

 figure, evidently copied from a bad drawing), the bill is yellow as 

 in the other Blackbirds ; the head, neck, and breast, much black- 

 er than in the female, and the pale earthy grey back and anterior 

 abdomen form a pale ring rouud the body, the lower abdomen 

 being deep ferruginous. 



Carpodacus rubicilla. 



A specimen of a female obtained from Tibet, north of Sikkim, 

 in December 1876, adds considerably to the known ran^e of 

 this species. 



Sterna tibetana, Saunders. P. Z. S. 1876, p. 649. 



One specimen, killed July 1875, in the region of Tibet imme- 

 diately north of Sikkim, agrees perfectly with the description 

 given by Mr. Howard Saunders, being darker in colour both 

 above and below than S. fluviafMis, (S. hirundo of Temminck 

 and of Jerdon's Birds of India, but not of Linnaeus,) with a 

 distinct vinous tint on the bre&st and abdomen and rather 



* The tail is measured as usual from the insertion of the central tail feathers ; the 

 culmen is from the rise of the skull to the tip of bill. In merula and many other 

 birds in which the bare culmen runs back between the feathers, no good measurement 

 of the bill from the forehead can bo made. 



