11 



504 Birds of Celebes: Timeliidae. 



Young. "Has pale shaft-lines on the head, and on the breast and abdomen some feathers 

 with pale centres and dark brown margins, like those of some young Thrushes." 

 "The tarsus is covered with an unbroken lamina in adult birds, only at the lower 

 part a scale or two can be distinguished. In this immature specimen . . . the ridges 

 of the margins of scales can still be distinguished in the middle part of the tarsus !" 

 (Hartert 1). 



Nidification. Unknown. 



Distribution. Celebes: Peak of Bonthain (Everett). 



This fine mountain-species of Babbler formed, perhaps, the most interesting 

 of Mr. Everett's discoveries on the Peak of Bonthain in 1896. It is very like 

 certain Blackbirds in appearance, though the shape of its wing, as well as the 

 peculiar superciliary stripe of black, at once shows that it has no very near 

 real affinities with Meriila or Turdus. Mr. Ernst Hartert erected the genus 

 Cataponera for it, and, as present-day genera go, it is fully entitled to this rank, 

 and, with Rhabdotorrhinus , Pyrrhocentor , Myza, Cittura, and others, to be cited 

 as an ancient Celebesian type. Its affinities, according to Hartert, are to be 

 found in the genera Garrulax^ ranging from the Himalayas to Java, Rhinodchla 

 of Sumatra and Borneo, and Allocotops of Mt. Kini Balu, Borneo; but it differs 

 from them, and from other allied forms of these regions, in not having the tail 

 graduated, but almost square. Rhinodchla^ which also seems to be a mountain- 

 haunting genus and strikes us as being most like Cataponera, differs by having 

 its tail decurved as well as graduated (the outermost rectrice being 20 mm 

 shorter than the middle ones), and its front toes are relatively much shorter^). 



GENUS TRICHOSTOMA Blyth. 



This genus consists of about half a dozen plain-looking species, with olive, 

 grey, and white as their chief colours, in size rather larger than a Sparrow. 

 Culmen about as long as the cranium, nearly straight, tip bent down and over- 

 lapping the mandible from the notch; nostrils oval, posterior walls membranous ; 

 rictal bristles large, reaching to the nostril or further; tail rounded, twice as 

 long as the tarsus; middle toe and claw nearly as long as the tarsus; wing 

 blunt, rounded, 4**" — S"' remiges the longest. 



Occurs from South Tenasserim to Java, Borneo, and Celebes. 



f * 206. TRICHOSTOMA OELEBENSIS (StiiekL). 



North Celebes Babbler. 



Trichostoma celebense (Ij Strickl., Contr. Oru. 1849, 127, \± 35 (front figure); (2) Blyth, 

 Ibis 1867, 2 (footnote); (3) Wald., Tr. Z. S. 1872, VIH, 113; (4) Briiggem., Abh. 



1) We cannot make out what Dr. Sharpe means, in his diagnosis of this genus, by the expression "out- 

 stretched feet falling short of tail by twice the length of the tarsus" (Cat. B. "VTE, 328). In a sMn before us 

 the feet fall short of the tip of the tail by about half the length of the tarsus; from the base of the tail, 

 certainly, they are distant about twice the length of the tarsus. Ai'e Dr. Sharp e's skins prepared in this manner ? 



