296 
Birds of Celebes; Alcedinidae. 
greenish black, not regularly barred as shown in Sharpe’s (e III) figure of it. 
The head, back, and scapulars of this specimen are very green. It is worthy 
of note that those specimens from the Celebes Province which are greenest 
above most usually have the breast barred with dusky, while those of the bluest 
upper surface are generally pure white below. 
Sharpe has separated the two specimens from the Togian Islands in the 
British Museum as H. meyer% a subspecies of H. humii^ on the ground of their 
possessing black ear-coverts and nuchal collar, a wash of fulvous on the sides 
of the body, and the bill upturned at the tip in a very conspicuous manner. 
After examining the two specimens from Togian (Meyer) in the Berlin Museum, 
kindly forwarded to us for the purpose by Prof. Eeichenow, we find ourselves 
unable to admit the racial distinction of Togian birds; the bill in these two 
examples does not incline upward more than in many specimens from the main- 
land of Celebes, the ear-coverts of the female are blue, of the male washed 
with blue, the sides are indeed slightly fulvous, hut this is also seen in some 
Celebesian specimens. The blue of the upper surface does not differ from that 
of some specimens from Celebes. Whether the greener-backed birds also occur 
in Togian, as they do in Great Sangi, Talaut and elsewhere, remains to be as- 
certained. H. chloris in the East Indies may be compared to the Sparrow in 
Europe, so far as variation is concerned. 
GENUS MONACHALCYON Echb. 
These Kingfishers are of rather large size, and may be recognised by their 
having the tarsus as long as the middle toe without the claw; the and 5*^ 
primaries are longest, the P* shorter than the secondaries; the bill is red, 
conical, deeper than wide across the nostril, the length from the nostril less 
than 3 times the width; the tail is long, about 3 times the length of the bill 
from the nostril, rounded. The typical forms of Celebes are forest-haunting 
birds. Four species, one in Flores. 
* 92. MONACHALCYON MONACHUS (Bp.). 
Blue-cowled Kingfisher. 
The typical form of this species inhabits the Northern Peninsula of Celebes 
and has a China-blue head. In the Eastern Peninsula a form with a black 
head occurs. From Western Celebes Mr. Hartert has described a bird which 
is treated by him as a subspecies of the typical form, but further proof is 
required before the very different black-headed M. capucinus can be brought in 
as a third subspecies. The young of the typical monacJius is known to be like 
the adult; the young of M. capucinus is not known. 
