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



2. Teh. affinis, A. Hay, MS. : Malayan Teh. paradisi, auctorum ; 

 Muscipeta castanea {?), Temminck. In any state of plumage, this 

 species may be distinguished from the last by having the crest never 

 more than seven-eighths of an inch in length (generally less), and 

 the feathers which compose the crest are broader and much more com- 

 mingled into a uniform smooth surface than in the other. The middle 

 tail-feathers of the male rarely, if ever, attain a foot in length ; where- 

 as in the Indian species, they often exceed fifteen inches ; in form, 

 too, they are very much narrower than in Teh. paradisi (vera). 

 The adult male is white, with glossy-black head and neck, as in 

 the other ; but the black on the shafts of the feathers of the upper 

 plumage generally, is much more developed; and the middle caudal 

 feathers are black-shafted throughout their whole length, or nearly so, and 

 are more or less conspicuously margined throughout, both externally and 

 internally, with black, often broadly so throughout. A mature female 

 received from Malacca is wholly white, with black head and nape, and 

 black centres of feathers and edges of caudals, as in the male ; the cau- 

 dals being however broad, instead of narrow as in the other sex. 

 Young males in the chesnut plumage seem never to have any black on 

 the throat and fore-neck, which, with the nape, are wholly ash-colour, 

 as in some young females of Teh. paradisi ; these rufous males, and also 

 the younger rufous females, have little or no trace of the black centres to 

 the feathers, — but in older rufous females the latter are well developed on 

 the tertiaries, and the ash- colour of the nape, throat, breast and flanks, 

 is very dark* : the inner portion of the large alars, which in the corres- 

 ponding plumage of the Indian species is commonly chesnut throughout, 

 is in its Malayan relative always dusky black. This species is also 

 smaller than Teh. paradisi. It is common in the Malayan peninsula 

 the Tenasserim Provinces, and occurs rarely in Arracan ; replacing Teh. 

 paradisi of India Proper. 



The advance from rufous to white occurs in several other species ; as 

 somewhat fantastically shewn in one or two of Levaillant's plates : and 

 it is also instanced by Mr. Swainson's figure of his Muscipeta rufiventris, 

 in the ' Birdsof western Africa,' Nat. Libr., wherein an admixture of 

 white is exhibited upon the wing of a rufous specimen. 



* The Society has one chesnut female with shining black throat and fore-neck, as 

 commonly occurs in Teh. paradisi. 



