NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXIII. 1916. 291 



10. C. p. per ■pallida : Bougainville, Choiseul, Isabel and Florida Islands. — 

 Like elegans, but upperside paler. 



?11. C. p. timorlaoensis : Tenimber or Timorlant Islands. — Unfortunately we 

 have no specimens of this form, but if it is really an inhabitant of Tenimber, its 

 differences are doubtful. Meyer (Zeitsckr. ges. Orn. i. p. 198, pi. ix) had only two 

 females, and possibly not the real hypoleuca, for comparison. 



?12. C. p. stalkeri Math.: North Queensland (Cooktown) according to 

 Mathews (see Nov. Zool. xviii. p. 327). Said to have a greyer breast than hypoleuca, 

 but is, in our opinion, doubtfully distinct, though we have no good series to compare. 



13. C. p. hypoleuca: Northern Territory of Australia. — Underside very white, 

 primaries edged very light. Very near to C. p. angustifrons, but larger. — Mathews 

 separates another form which he calls Coracina hypoleuca parryi (Austral Avian 

 Record i. p. 43, 1912), from Parry's Creek, in N.W. Australia. He says it is 

 lighter on the upperside (" lighter upper-coloration ") than C. p. hypoleuca, but we 

 cannot confirm this from comparison of three specimens from N.W. Australia. 

 We have a male and a female from Luang, and two females from Sermatta, which 

 appear to be inseparable from C. p. hypoleuca. The former were shot in November, 

 the latter in June, but we do not know whether these birds are inhabitants of these 

 islands, or only stragglers. 



THE ALLEGED OCCURRENCE OE ARENARIA 

 MELANOCEPHALA (Vie.) IN INDIA. 



By ERNST HARTERT, Ph.D. 



IN the third edition of the A.O.U. Check-List of North, American Birds, p. 132, 

 in the distribution of Arenaria melanocephala (Vig.) is added : " accidental in 

 India." No mention of the occurrence of this species outside of America is made 

 in the Cat. B. Brit. Mus.., nor in Dresser's Manual of Pal. Birds, nor in Blanford's 

 Birds of India, though it has been observed on the coast of N.E. Siberia from the 

 Tschuktschen Peninsula to the Wrangel Islands. 



Upon inquiries in America Dr. Witmer Stone kindly gave me the following 

 information : 



" The record (of the occurrence of Arenaria melanocephala in India) was made 

 by Cassin in vol. ix of the Pacific Railroad Reports (B. N. America), p. 702, and 

 was based on a sjiecimen in the collection of Captain Boys. Captain Boys was an 

 officer in the British army in India, and the collection he made there was purchased 

 by Dr. Thomas B. Wilson, a former president of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 in Philadelphia, to whom we are indebted for the Rivoli, Gould, and other collec- 

 tions, and who was, moreover, a great-uncle of Dr. Wilson of the Scott Antarctic 

 expedition. The specimen in question is now No. 11597 of our collection, and 

 bears a label similar to others in the Boys collection. It reads as follows : 

 ' Strepsilas interpres young ; sex (?).' Evidently the collector was puzzled by 

 the appearance of the bird. Cassin's identification is undoubtedly correct, as the 

 specimen is a typical melanocephala. There is no locality on this or any other 



