1843.] Mr. Blyth's Report for December Meeting, 1842. 945 



Crawfurdii, Gray, and Calobates radiceus, Temminck, I have still no 

 means of referring to. 



Of Centropus Phillipensis, M. Lesson mentions a variety (?) from 

 Sumatra, only half the usual size : body above dull brownish-black ; 

 wings dirty rufous.* His young or female from Bengal would seem to 

 be a state of plumage of C. lepidus : " size of a Magpie ; plumage brown, 

 spotted and zoned with blackish brown, streaked with white on the 

 fore-part of the neck; tail brown above, rayed with whitish." C. pu~ 

 milus is doubtless C. Bengalensis, Latham, thus described from spe- 

 cimens in the Paris Museum : " Male size of a Thrush ; bill black 

 with a white spot ; tarsi brown ; plumage brown-black tinted with 

 rufous; tail wedged, broad, brown: from Java (!): female — a little larger 



mens in the green-glossed dark ashy plumage, with ferruginous under-parts from 

 the hreast, one of them having the latter much brighter than in any male I have yet 

 seen, the feathers of its breast being also partially tipped with the same ; another 

 female with uniformly dark upper-parts, has the entire under-parts scantily banded 

 with dull rufous, and traces of the same also on the forehead and above the eyes ; a 

 third female tends towards the hepaticus variety of plumage, having the upper-parts 

 dark, with rufous bars, which are darker and less conspicuous on the back and scapula- 

 ries, but vivid and strongly marked on the wing-coverts and tail, the rump dark with 

 faint traces of rufous, and the entire under-parts pale and weak ferruginous, with nar- 

 row dusky cross-bars, except on the under tail-coverts and towards the vent; a fourth 

 female, in the true hepaticus plumage, with a ferruginous rump, is that described as 

 exhibiting the mature female livery, in XI, 909. Well may M. Lesson designate 

 this bird (or an allied smaller species resembling it^) a "perfect Proteus." 



* Such a specimen I have now before me from Chusan, of the size and with the 

 form of beak of C. lepidus, but the colouring of C. Phillipensis, only the rufous is not 

 so bright, being washed with fuscous especially on the tertiaries, and the stems 

 of the dorsal feathers are more coarsely spinous and glistening. Length about 

 fourteen inches, of which the middle tail-feathers measure seven and a half, the 

 outermost nearly four inches less ; wing six inches : bill to gape an inch and one- 

 eighth, and nine-sixteenths of an inch in greatest vertical depth ; tarse an inch 

 and a half; and long hind-toe and claw an inch and three-fourths. Should this not 

 be named, I propose to designate it C. dimidiatus- 



C. lepidus extends into Nepal, a specimen from that country having been forward- 

 ed by Mr. Hodgson ; and an example of the young in first plumage, from the 

 Malay peninsula, may be described as follows : — Upper-parts light chestnut, 

 handsomely barred with black, these bars more narrow on the wing-coverts, prima- 

 ries and secondaries ; tail green-glossed black, with narrow rufous cross-bars; crown 

 and neck above longitudinally striated, the spinous s*hafts of the feathers little 

 developed, and their lateral margins black : under-parts pale fulvescent, with slight 

 dusky barring on the flanks, and spots of the same on the sides of the neck : bill 

 pale yellowish-horn, the ridge of the upper mandible reddish-brown. M. Lesson's 

 Bengal specimens above noticed would not appear to differ materially. 



