242 
BIRDS OF BHITISH BUEMAH. 
plumage white, shaded with ashy on the sides and with pale buff on the 
breast and belly; the feathers immediately at the base of the upper 
mandible, the lores, a thin rim round the eyes, the top of the head and 
nape deep black ; back, scapulars, rump and upper tail-coverts dark ashy ; 
primary wing-coverts black ; wing-coverts blackish brown, edged with ashy 
and the greater coverts tipped white ; primaries dark brown, with an 
incomplete whitish bar crossing the feathers obliquely ; secondaries brown, 
the bases all white, forming a large spot ; tertiaries ashy brown, the outer 
webs edged with white ; under wing-coverts white ; tail black, the four 
outer pairs of feathers with very broad white oblique tips ; the shafts of 
all the tail-feathers black. 
Female. Similar to the male, but the black of the head is wanting, the 
whole upper plumage being uniform ashy ; the forehead is not white, but 
ashy, uniform with the other parts of the upper plumage ; the tail is 
brown ; the under plumage is clouded with brown. 
The young appear to resemble the female. 
Length 8 inches, tail 4, wing 3*8, tarsus '6, bill from gape '8. The 
female does not appear to differ in size from the male. 
I have met with this species at Kyeikpadein, near Pegu, in the cold 
weather. It is apparently a rare bird, and has not been procured in any 
other part of British Burmah. 
It has a very wide range. In China, according to Mr. Swinhoe, it 
occurs from the south to Pekin. Pere David states that it is found in 
Eastern China extending up to Mantchuria, and he adds that it disappears 
in winter from these parts. Von Schrenk notes it from Amoorland, and 
Badde gives it from East Siberia. There is a specimen from Yokohama in 
Mr. Seebohm^s collection ; and Messrs. Blakiston and Pryer found it in 
Fujisan and Yamato in Japan. It has occurred in the Philippines, Borneo 
and Sumatra ; and Mr. Davison procured it at various places in the Malay 
peninsula. 
and Shillong specimens, merely on account of difference of size. Nor would the propor- 
tionally much larger bill have satisfied me of their distinctness, nor even the fact that in 
both my males the black of the throat appears to descend further on the breast than in 
any one of forty-six males of P. hrevirostris, as this might be due to some stretching of the 
skin in preparing it ; but when with these differences is coupled a female of a wholly 
different type, with the upper surface of a much darker grey and with the chin, throat and 
entire lower surface of the rich bright hue of adult female P. speciosus, a hue not 
approached, as regards chin and throat at any rate, by any one of the twenty-seven female 
P. brevirostns now before me, I could not avoid recognizing what is clearly a distinct 
species." 
Hume's Minivet lias been procured only in the hill-forests of Tenasserim on Mooleyit 
and at Meetan. 
