1847.] New or Little Known Species of Birds, 4/5 



additional recent females which completely satisfy me of their identity. 

 That described as T. unicolor, I now infer to be a very old female ; 

 and think it probable that old males, with ruibus sides (as describep 

 under T. dissimilis) would also assume the more ashen hue of the 

 upper-parts, and the spotless ashy of the throat and breast : but, in such 

 case, the variation this Thrush would exhibit is most remarkable. 



Sitta europcea, and $. affinis, XV, 288. Mr. Strickland informs me, 

 that " the bird sent as 5. europcea from Norway, is the 8. asiatica, v. 

 uralensis, auctorum, found in Siberia and the Ural, but never yet re- 

 corded from Norway, where, according to all my authorities, the true 

 S. europcea, with the lower-parts fully as rufous as in Hodgson's nipa- 

 le?isis, is alone found." This latter species is distinguished from S. 

 europcea by its much smaller size, &c., as mentioned in a note to XV, 

 289, and by a character which I did not then notice, (from an imper- 

 fection of the specimens at that time before me,) viz. that the two mid- 

 dle tail-feathers have, constantly, their basal half white, except on the 

 longitudinal outer half of their exterior web. 



Totanus solitarius, Vieillot, XIII, 389. This, according to Mr. 

 Strickland, is identical with Scolopax melanoleuca, Gm,, and Sc. voci- 

 fera, Wilson. 



P. S. No. 2. In the c Calcutta Journal of Natural History/ No. 28, 

 p. 560, it is remarked that the Palceornis nigrirostris of the Catalogue 

 of Nepalese birds, is " asserted to be the young merely of P. pondi- 

 cerianus vel mystaceus ;" and its distinctness as a species is there argued. 

 The latter, however, is not the case. I have long since ascertained the 

 black-billed bird to be the female of P. pondicerianus / though occa- 

 sionally, but rarely, females of this species will have a little red on the 

 upper mandible, more or less. The same sexual diversity occurs in other 

 species of Palceornis, as in P. caniceps and P. eryihrogenys recently 

 described from the Nicobar Islands, in P. columboides of the Neilgherries 

 (the female of which is P. melanorhynchus of Sykes), and seemingly in 

 P. bitorquatus of the Isle of France. The fine series of P. pondicerianus 

 set up in the Society's Museum exhibits this fact most convincingly. 

 The young female of P. pondicerianus was not long ago named P. 

 modestus by Mr. Fraser (in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1845, p. 16). 



The same correspondent asks — " Why was the publication of the 

 * Catalogue of Nepalese Birds' discontinued after about a tithe only 

 had been given V s To this I think it will be sufficient to reply, that. 

 every one of the novelties contained in that catalogue has now been 



3 o. 2 



