ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, ETC. 
difficult to shoot. Further, the Leyden Museum, some years ago, 
received numerous specimens from the Gold Coast, and one is to be 
found in Stockholm, brought home hy Afzelius from Sierra Leone. 
Sundev. Ofvers. Kongl. Acad. Forhandl., 1849, p. 160. 
So much for the habitats and geographical distribution of these 
birds. 
Whether Riippell has good reason or not, when he declares 
that the bird described by Edwards, and the one figured by him, 
specifically differ from one another, we are unable either to confute 
or confirm, by means of the specimens which the collection of this 
place offers for our comparison. But at all events, this conclu- 
sion is rendered highly improbable, by the remarkable statements 
mentioned under Nos. 3 and 4. The following assertion is directly 
opposed to those observations — “ Almost all known species of 
Turacus have the plumage of both sexes and the young birds of 
the same colour.” It follows from what is said above, that in some 
species the colour of the edge of the crest varies with the age of 
the bird ; and the same we must mention in regard to the clearness 
and extension of the characteristic white stripe of the eye, founded 
upon an observation frequently made on specimens of Cor. buffonii, 
where the place of the bright white stripe is only indicated by a 
few white feathers. Andrew Smith remarks, that in the female 
of Turacus joorphyreolophus, the plumage is much less brilliantly 
coloured, and that especially the beautiful red of the wing-feathers 
is much less expanded than in the male bird.* 
* I have no doubt, that Dr. Riippell is mistaken in separating T. meriani from 
T. persa. Had he consulted Edwards’s original work, instead of Seligmann’s German 
translation, he would have seen not only that Seligmann’s text varies considerably 
from the original of Edwards, but that Edwards’s plate does in fact entirely cor- 
respond with his description. In all the copies of Edwards which I have seen, the 
bird is coloured with a red margin to the crest, as stated in his description ; and it 
is consequently only from the inaccurate colouring of Seligmann’s copy of Edwards’s 
plate that M. Riippell has been led to separate his T. meriani from T. persa. The 
latter specific name will therefore stand for the red-margined Turacus of Edw., pi- 7> 
and the T. meriani will gink into a synonyme of it. — H. E. Strickland. 
80 
