EUDEOMIAS VEREDUS (Hurting). 



CIEREPIDESMUS ASIATICUS (Gould). 



ASIA 77( ' DOTTREL. (Jknus : Cibrbpidbsmus. 



() 



F this rait- and little-known bird we find (lie most exhaustive account yet recorded in " The Ibis," for 

 1870, p. 209, where Mr. James Edmund Harting writes: — 



'•Hitherto this bird has generally been considered to be the young of Eudromias Asiaticus 

 (Pale); butas it differs materially from that species in several important particulars, I can only suppose 

 that such a conclusion was arrived at from descriptions, and not from an actual comparison of specimens. 



"When Mr. Gould described it for the first time, in 1848 (et supra), he had no adult specimen 

 before him — those which he exhibited from North Australia being young birds, in the brown plumage 

 which is peculiar to all true Dottrels. 



" In the same stage of plumage were all the specimens procured in Java by Horsfield, and in 

 that island, Celebes, and the Aru Islands by Mr. Wehace, in New South Wales by Gilbert, and on the 

 Bampton Shoals, as mentioned, by Mr. Krifi't. Hence, until the adult bird had been obtained, it was 

 almost impossible to arrive at any sound conclusion as to its specific characters, and Mr. Gould has very 

 candidly remarked, in his 'Handbook to the Birds of Australia,' that this bird has been a stumbling-block 

 to all ornithologists, himself included, from the time he first described it to the date of this remark. 



" A specimen in full summer plumage has at length been obtained, and gives a solution of the 

 difficulty. This specimen was procured at Shanghai by Mr. Reede, and was forwarded by him to Mr. 

 Gould, who has kindly lent it to me, with leave to figure it in the illustration of the present paper. 



" It frequently happens that a general description may apply to two or more allied species, and 

 doubt may in consequence be thrown upon a newly described species from the inability of the reader to 

 distinguish it from an allied form already well known. 



" On comparing the two plates it will be seen that there is a striking general resemblance between 

 E. Asiaticus and E. Veredus, and that the two species are evidently closely allied. Nevertheless, there are 

 certain characters, constant in each, and sufficient to enable them to be separated without difficulty. A 

 glance at the respective measurements will show that E. Veredus is much superior in size. In length it 

 exceeds E. Asiaticus by an inch. The wing is an inch longer, and the tarsus is more elongated by 

 three-tenths of an inch. 



"Looking to the fact that the only specimen of this bird, in the adult plumage, hitherto reported 

 was procured in China, where it was considered a rarity, and that all the examples from Australia and the 

 Malay Archipelago have proved to be immature, I conclude that the species is Asiatic rather than Australian, 

 as has been supposed, and that its true home will probably be found to be Mongolia and Mantchuria, 

 perhaps even further to the north, and that the appearance of so many immature examples south of the 

 equator may be accounted for by supposing that E. Veredus, like many other species, is affected by the 

 same migratory instincts which impels the young to wander southward at the approach of winter." 



Adult, in summer (hitherto undescribed) : Bill, black, moderately long, slender ; crown, upper 

 portion of the back and wings, hair-brown; forehead, eyelids, and chin, pure white; eyebrows and sides 

 of the face and neck, buff, the latter colour extending round the nape, and separating the hair-brown of 

 the crown from that of the back; across the breast, a rufous band, the lowest feathers of which are terminated 

 by a slight edging of dark umber brown ; thence to the extremities of the under-tail coverts, pure w r hite ; 

 primaries, brownish-black — the shaft of the first and a portion of the second, white, the shafts of the others, 

 biown; secondaries, long, reaching almost to the end of the primaries; axillaries, smoke-grey; tail, long, 



