206 Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant on Birds 



Catalogue of Birds and remarks that " it may not be an 

 adult bird,*" but it has every appearance of being fully 

 adultj the barring on the crown and dark margins to the 

 breast-feathers characteristic of immaturity being absent. 

 It may be merely a variation in colour of A. pusilla, normally 

 coloured purplish-blue examples of v^^hich are found in the 

 same locality. In any case it would be unsafe to describe 

 the bird as a new form without having more material, and I 

 therefore refrain from giving it a name. 



In the British Museum there is an adult bird from the 

 Solomon Islands catalogued by Sharpe under A. pusilla as 

 "/i. Ad. sk. Aola, Guadalcanar. C. M. Woodford, Esq. 

 [C.]." This specimen is perhaps not quite adult, some few 

 feathers of the chest having dusky margins, but it is certainly 

 not referable to A. pusilla. It is rather a large bird, the 

 wing (still in moult) measuring 59 mm. as compared with 

 55 mm. It has the blue parts of the plumage deep cobalt- 

 blue as in A. richa.rdsi Tristram, from Rendova Island, 

 Solomons {cf. Ibis, 1882, p. 134, pi. iv.), but in the latter 

 the blue on each side of the breast is iinited and forms a 

 continuous pectoral band ; the under tail-coverts are wliite 

 tipped with blue, instead of blue with a little white at the 

 base as in A. richardsi. In A. pusilla the under tail-coverts 

 are always white. 



Messrs. Rothschild and Hartert enumerate various speci- 

 mens from Grizo, Choiseul, and Bougainville Islands, also in 

 the Solomon Group, which they refer to A. richardsi. They 

 state that in these the pectoral band is often incomplete. 

 I have examined these and find that they are not typical 

 A. richardsi, but belong to a distinct subspecies. 



For the bird from Aola, Guadalcanar, I have proposed the 

 name of 



Alcyone richardsi aolse. 



Alcyone richardsi aolce Ogilvie-Grant, Bull. B. 0. C. xxxv. 

 p. 13^1914). 



The type-specimen was obtained by Mr. C. M. Woodford 

 on the Gth of December, 1888. 



