272 FURTHER NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF GILGIT. 
other times, are bright carmine. The underparts are washed 
with bright carmine instead of faint rosy, as at other seasons, 
and the rump and supercilium are bright rosy. Out of a 
large number of specimens obtained by Dr. Scully and myself, 
this is the only one in this stage of plumage, when it differs 
so greatly from those obtained at other times of the year, that 
it might almost pass muster as a different species. Mr. See- 
bohm’s collection contains several * similar specimens from 
Central Asia. As my collection contains a number of spe- 
cimens shot within a few daysof this one, and which, though 
much brighter than ordinary winter specimens, do not show 
any thing ‘like such bright markings as this one, I am inclined 
to think that this plumage is not assumed by adult males 
till after the second moult, that is in the third year of their 
existence. The males of the Propasser and Carpodacus group, 
as far as is known, all breed in female plumage the first year, 
and there is no reason why some such delay in assuming full 
breeding plumage should not similarly occur in the Lrythros- 
piza group. The colouring of EL. githaginea appears to under- 
go a somewhat similar change. 
Gould’s plate in pt. xxix. of the “ Birds of Asia” shows a 
male in the plumage I have described, and a female in winter 
plumage. The figure in David and Oustalet’s “ Oiseaux de 
Ja Chine” is of a specimen in winter plumage. 
166.—Propasser blythi, Sp. nov. (744.) 
I obtained altogether two males and five females of this 
species in a secluded valley close to the Indus. The males 
agree with Blyth’s type of Propasser frontalis in the 
Calcutta Museum. Blyth first described this species in the 
“Journal of the Asiatic Society’? for 1863; but in his 
Appendix to the “ Birds of India,” Jerdon writes that Blyth 
had ceased to regard it as specifically distinct from P. thura. 
It is, however, certainly distinct, and hasa wing averaging 
from ‘10 to ‘25 inch longer, both in the male and female. 
The whole colouration is fainter and softer, and the general 
ground-colour of the upper parts is dull earthy brown, un- 
mixed with rosy, instead of dark rufous brown as in P. thura, 
or dark crimson-brown, as in P. rhodopeplus, while the bill 
is finer and less Pyrrhuline. The female has the underparts 
and rump tinged with pale yellowish chestnut, which in 
P. thura are deep reddish chestnut, and the upper parts and 
wings are free from any tinge of rufous. 
Blyth’s specific name has, unfortunately, been given to 
a Rose Finch in North America. The generic distinctness of 
the Carpodacus and Propasser groups does not appear well 
