282 Notices and Descriptions of various New [No. 172. 



from the neighbourhood of the Straits, but Heifer (a very unsafe autho- 

 rity) mentions it to inhabit the Tenasserim Provinces. Probably the 

 Ath. badius, Hodgson, from Nepal, mentioned in Mr. G. R. Gray's Cata- 

 logue of the British Museum Raptores, but as yet (I believe) undescribed, 

 pertains to the same little sub-group. 



In p. 12, ante, I suggested that Bucco zeylanicus, Gmelin, founded 

 on the " Yellow- cheeked Barbet" of Brown's illustrations, would pro- 

 bably be found to differ from B. caniceps, Franklin, which Mr. Jerdon 

 had assigned to zeylanicus. There is now more reason to incline to 

 that naturalist's opinion, as the B. caniceps is very common in Ceylon, 

 being rather smaller, on the average, than specimens from Upper India, 

 as indeed are those of the Peninsula generally, so far as my observations 

 have hitherto gone. 



The Picus cey tonus, Forster, mentioned in a note to p. 18 ante, is a 

 true Brachypternus, which appears to be as common in Ceylon 

 as Br. aurantius is in India generally : and as there can be no doubt 

 of its speciflcal distinctness, any more than of the distinctness of Tiga 

 Raffiesii (p. 16, ante,) from T. tridactyla and its immediate allies, this fact 

 of the existence of a plurality of decided species of these types — of an 

 undeniable repetition of their peculiar and marked characters — adds 

 much to the probability of the more closely allied species — Br. micropus 

 (XIV, 194), Br. dilutus of Scinde (XIV, 550), — T. Shorei, (Vigors), and 

 T. intermedia (XIV, 193), being also severally distinct from and not mere 

 local varieties of Br. aurantius and T. tridactyla. Other examples of this 

 close affinity occur in Micropternus badius, M. phceoceps, and M. gularis ; 

 and Mr. Jerdon, in the third No. of his ' Illustrations of Indian Ornitho- 

 logy', has contended that his Hemicercus cordatus is probably an ana- 

 logous representative of H. canente, (Lesson), of the countries of the 

 eastern side of the Bay of Bengal. That he is right in this conjecture is 

 not improbable ; though the two are absolutely similar in structure, colour- 

 ing, and markings : but the South of India species appears to be constantly 

 smaller than its representative on the opposite side of the Bay. Mr. Jer- 

 don gives the length of wing of the former as three inches and three-quar- 

 ters, that of a female in the Society's Museum being only three inches 

 and a half : but of several specimens received from Arracan and Tenasse- 

 rim, the length of wing of the males averages four inches, and of the fe- 

 males three and three-quarters j the latter being conspicuously larger than 



