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HEMIGNATHUS LICHTENSTEINI. 



JIBI. 



Hemignathus obscurus, Lichtenstein, Abhandl. k. Akad. Berlin, 1838, p. 449, tab. v. fig. 1* (nee 

 Certhia obscura, Gmelin) ; id. Nomencl. Av. Mus. Berol. p. 55 (1854) ; Dole, Proc. Bost. 

 Soc. N. H. xii. p. 298 (partim) (1869) ; id. Hawaiian Alman. 1875, p. 45 (partim). 



Hemignathus lichtensteini, S. B. Wilson, Ann. & Mag. N. H. (6) iv. p. 401 (Nov. 1889) ; id. Ibis, 

 1890, p. 190. 



Hemignathus ellisianus, Rothschild, Avifaun. Laysan, p. 87 (1893) {nee Gray). 



Figura notabilis. 



This very distinct species, peculiar, so far as we know, to Oahu, had, as I pointed 

 out in the paper above cited, been hitherto confounded with its Hawaiian congener 

 H. obscurus. Examples of the former were obtained in 1837 by Deppe, and one of 

 them was figured in the following year by Lichtenstein, who doubtless had not seen a 

 specimen of the latter or he could scarcely have failed to perceive the difference between 

 them. On my return from the Sandwich Islands in 1889, I was fortunately able, 

 through the kindness of Prof. Mobius of Berlin, to compare the very subject of his 

 illustrious predecessor's figure with my own specimens of II obscurus, and thus to 

 justify the suspicion of their distinctness that had been already aroused. I accordingly 

 bestowed on the present species the name of the celebrated zoologist who first published 

 an indication of its existence, and I have to thank my good fortune for being the first 

 to elucidate this matter. 



Mr. Rothschild (loc. cit.) has referred this species to the " Drepanis (Hemignathus) 

 ellisiana " of Gray (Cat. B. Trop. Isl. Pacif. p. 9), which I have already correctly quoted 

 as a synonym of H. obscurus. It is pretty clear that Mr. Gray never saw a specimen 

 of either, and it is absolutely certain that three out of the four authorities cited by him 

 refer to H. obscurus. Vieillot, the first of them, as I have already shown, figured (Ois. 

 Dor. pi. 53) the very specimen, now at Liverpool, which was formerly in the Leverian 

 Museum, and actually the type of Latham's description, on which was founded the 

 Certhia obscura of Gmelin, and hence the H. obscurus of modern ornithologists. 

 Similarly the bird figured in Ellis's unpublished drawings (no. 28), which from the name 

 used by Gray is doubtless to be regarded as the type of his supposed species, is most 

 unquestionably H. obscurus, as anyone who examines the drawing in the British Museum 



