1060 | The American Naturalist. [December, 
ashy. Above, over the back, wings and two middle feathers 
of the long and shapely tail, the color is a warm chestnut. 
Black occurs also on the primaries, and in lines and edgings 
along some of the tail feathers, mixed with gray. The feet 
are red; around the eye runs a circlet of bare skin. 
- Otidiphaps nobilis, a ground pigeon, is rich in color. On the 
long feathers of the head a dark green lies; around the neck 
runs a collar of green rippling with light. A rich brown dark- 
ens the metallic surface of the back, while the wings are coffee . 
colored. The curiously rounded tail is a dark blue-black and 
contains twenty feathers. The note of this bird is strenuous 
and persistent, lacking perhaps, the volume of certain species, 
but making up the deficiency by iteration and reiteration. 
The bill is like a small bone. 
To D’Albertis we are indebted for a brief description of 
Gymnophaps albertisii, novum genus et nova species. “The form 
of their beaks, the nostrils surrounded by a circle of the bright- 
est scarlet, and a large bare space around the eyes of the same 
brilliant color, give these birds a most curious appearance. 
The back is generally ash colored, speckled with black at the 
ends of the feathers.” 
Among pigeons, indeed among all the feathered folk, there 
are few more curious looking birds than the species Caloenas 
nicobarica, Nicobar pigeon, representing a genus by itself, scat- _ 
tered more or less abundantly throughout the Malayan Archi- 
pelago. It possesses considerable power of flight, although 
not an easy bird upon the wing, hence-its general diffusion over 
the numberless islands of the Australasian seas. Mr. Guppy 
records its appearance in the Solomon Islands. The anoma- 
lous feature causing the peculiar appearance is the spread of 
long individualized feathers over the neck, shoulders and 
back. Thus is formed a kind of disparted mantle in which 
the lanceolate plumes seem to have been thrust after the sub- 
jacent layer was grown. The reflections from this singular 
covering are a blending of bronze and green. A still brighter 
reflection is turned from the metallic surface of the wings, a 
livelier green here meeting the eye. One notices with some 
surprise, as if it were an incongruous appearance, that the 
