80 NOVITATBS ZOOLOGICAE XXIII. 1916. 



(3) The note of the tame Dove is a carious laughing one, that of the Indian 

 wild bird quite different (see Baker, Indian Pigeons and Doves, p. 224, and other 

 places). S. roseogrisea, on the other hand, has the same call as that of our 

 domestic race. 



The latter is either cinnamon buff on the upperside or more or less entirely 

 white ; therefore not much can be learnt from its colour, but it would seem remark- 

 able that no trace of the grey under tail-coverts is ever noticed in the domestic 

 race, these coverts being grey in the Indian, white in the African species. 



We must therefore conclude that the Indian species cannot be the ancestor of 

 the tame Dove, while in all probability S. roseogrisea is the species from which our 

 domestic birds have come. 



It is important to clearly understand this, because Mr. Baker's book must be 

 widely spread and his nomenclature may therefore mislead many ornithologists. 

 Before Mr. Baker the late Professor E. Oustalet dissented from Count Salvadori's 

 correct view in a lengthy article entitled " Recherches sur l'origine de la Tourterelle 

 ä collier," in the Proceedings of the Third Ornithological Congress (Paris 1900), 

 Ornis xi. pp. 259-66. But Oustalet's articles have been curiously neglected in this 

 country, and the Ornis is by no means in every ornithologist's library. For the 

 reasons explained above, I cannot agree with Oustalet, who brings no proof of his 

 theory. Some of his conclusions are hypothetically based on a mounted specimen 

 in the Paris Museum, the locality of which is uncertain, and which, therefore, 

 caunot enlighten us in any way. 



The name of the Indian Ring-Dove can therefore not be risoria ; but, un- 

 fortunately, neither can it be douraca, because Frivaldsky in A. M. Tdrsasdg 

 Evkönyvei (Hungarian Academy writings), 1834-36, iii. kötet (3rd vol.), osztäly 3 

 (3rd part), pp. 183, 184, pi. viii, published 1838, described the wild Ring-Dove from 

 Turkey as Columba risoria var. decaocto. Moreover douraca of 1844 is a nomen 

 nudum ! 



A. E. Brehm, in the Thierleben, among others, described &. roseogrisea as the 

 ancestor of the tame Ring-Dove, but he seems partially to have mixed it up with 

 the Asiatic species. 



I am sorry to say that I must disagree with my friend Baker in another case of 

 nomenclature, for he curiously misapplied the name meena. He called the " Indian 

 Rufous Turtle-Dove " Streptopelia turtur meena. He quite correctly separated it 

 from orientalis, with which so great an ornithologist as Salvadori had united it in 

 the Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxi. p. 403. 



The case of the name meena is as follows : In the Proceedings of the Committee 

 of the Zool. Soc. London, ii. p. 149 (1832), Sykes described under the name Columba 

 meena the male of the Dove with white under tail-coverts, which breeds in Central 

 Asia and visits India in the winter ; to this he added the description of a bird 

 which he thought was the female of his meena, and which had the under tail-coverts 

 grey ; unfortunately this supposed female of his meena was not the same, but 

 belonged to a very different race. The name meena cannot be suppressed, but must 

 be used for the bird which ten years later was named ferrago by Eversmann, a 

 name under which it is found in the Catalogue of Birds. It is against any 

 rules, and there is no reason whatever why it should be adopted for the supposed 

 female of the white-vented race, and the Indian grey-vented bird must be called 

 agricola. 



Mr. Baker has very sensibly made use in his book of the " trinominal system." 



