1842.] Malayan species of Cuculidoe. 903 



in extent ; wing from bend seven inches and a half, and tail six inches, 

 the outermost feather two inches shorter : another specimen had the 

 tail six inches and three-quarters long : bill to forehead (through the fea- 

 thers) an inch and one-eighth, and to gape an inch and five-sixteenths ; 

 tarse three-quarters of an inch. Bill coloured as in C. canorus, but the 

 irides pale dusky, and the orbits and feet light wax-yellow : the abdo- 

 minal cross-streaks are, also, usually broader and wider apart than in 

 C. canorus ; but perhaps the most ready distinction is afforded by the 

 comparative shortness of the wings. Colour of the upper-parts darker, 

 and in old birds uniform pure dark ashy ; in specimens once moulted 

 a bronzed ash-brown, with the head and neck grey, the throat and 

 breast pale grey, and slight traces of rufous on the sides of the neck 

 and on the wings. A young Malayan specimen has much white 

 about the head, occupying the whole loral feathers, broadly margining 

 the lateral feathers of the crown, and passing backward as an ill- 

 defined streak to the occiput ; ground-colour of the upper-parts dull 

 brown, with a slight gloss of bronze ; the nuchal feathers having one 

 broad bar of white, which is little seen from their overlapping, and 

 slightly edged with pale rufous; the interscapularies with a narrow 

 single bar of pale rufous, and margined with the same ; scapularies, 

 wing-coverts, and tertiaries, more broadly tipped with dull white, 

 and together with the primaries and secondaries more or less barred 

 or spotted with dingy rufous ; inner webs of the primaries marked 

 with white, as in the adult ; the white markings on the shafts of the 

 tail-feathers more developed, and the medial tail-feathers spotted with 

 faint rufous along both margins; the upper tail-coverts are barred with 

 rufous and tipped with whitish, the lower almost spotless: under- 

 pays fulvous-white, barred with dusky, which latter is almost hidden 

 on the throat and breast by the broad pale margins of the feathers.* 



This bird is common on the Himalaya, and I was informed by 

 Lieut. Tickell that it is of frequent occurrence in the neighbour- 

 hood of Chyebassa, in Central India, but I cannot find it recorded 



* This young bird seems to agree, except in being a trifle smaller, with the Brown 

 Cuckoo of Latham, Gen. Hist. III., 291. " Length thirteen inches, bill bent; gene- 

 ral colour of the back and wings brown, mottled with white ; head, neck, and under- 

 parts, white, with dusky markings; tail long, cuneiform, whitish, barred irregularly 

 with dusky, legs bluish ; toes before and behind tolerably hooked. Inhabits Ceylon." 



