1845.] or little known Species of Birds. 587 



adopting the specific name bestowed by Mr. Gould, in preference to 

 either of those given by Mr. Hodgson, as being alone applicable to the 

 species generally. However stringently rules may be drawn up, such 

 as the very excellent " Series of Propositions for rendering the Nomen- 

 clature of Zoology uniform and permanent," adopted as the Report of 

 a Committee appointed by the ' British Association' for the consider- " 

 ation of this subject, cases will still arise, now and then, in which a 

 naturalist must rely upon his own judgment, and indeed the present 

 one may be brought under § 1 1 of the " Propositions," by which " a 

 name may be changed when it implies a false proposition which is 

 likely to propagate important errors." For a precedent, I cite the 

 Neomorpha Gouldii of Mr. G. R. Gray, it having been ascertained 

 that the N. acutirostris and N. crassirostris of Gould were merely the 

 different sexes of the same bird. At the same time, I most fully con- 

 cur in the remark, that " this privilege is very liable to abuse, and 

 ought therefore to be applied only in extreme cases, and with great 

 caution." In the present instance, it may be justly urged in favour of 

 Mr. Gould's specific name, that the bird having been figured by that 

 naturalist as Microura squamata, it is already better known by that 

 denomination than by any other, and that the proposed alteration, so 

 far from being likely to induce confusion, is, on the contrary, calculated 

 to remove a source of error, such as would result from the exclusive 

 adoption of either of Mr. Hodgson's appellations to the species in all 

 its phases. I might even have hesitated in proposing an entirely 

 new name for the bird in question ; but that given by Mr. Gould 

 has not only already obtained currency, but was besides very nearly 

 contemporaneous with the partially applicable ones bestowed by Mr. 

 Hodgson. Certainly, the characters and dimensions of the three 

 alleged species correspond exactly ; and it will be seen that Mr. 

 Gould's second figure represents a specimen just midway between 

 T. albiventer and T. rvfiventer, while an example presented to the 

 Society by Mr. Hodgson of his T. concolor, is of a uniform brown 

 colour all over, with a slight ashy shade on the under parts; but 

 retains two or three white-margined feathers on the breast resembling 

 those of ordinary albiventer, with which it quite accords in all other 

 particulars, and is decidedly of the same species. A second specimen 

 is plain brown above, with white throat, and white margins to the 

 feathers of the breast and belly, decreasing on those of the flanks. A 



