504 
Birds of Celebes: Timeliidae. 
Young. “Has pale shaft-lines on the head, and on the breast and abdomen some feathers 
uitli pale centres and dark brown margins, like those of some yoimg Thrushes.” 
“The tarsus is covered with an unbroken lamina in adult birds, only at the lower 
part a scale or two can be distinguished. In this immature S 2 )ecimen . . . the ridges 
of the margins of scales can still be distinguished in the middle ] 3 art of the tarsus!” 
(Hartert 1). 
Nidifleation. Unknown. 
Distribution. Celebes: Peak of Bonthain (Everett). 
This fine mountain-species of Babbler formed, perhaps, the most interesting 
of Mr. Everett’s discoveries on the Peak of Bonthain in 1896. It is very like 
certain Blackbirds in appearance, though the shape of its wing, as well as the 
peculiar superciliary stripe of black, at once shows that it has no very near 
real affinities with Merula or Turdus. Mr. Ernst Hartert erected the genus 
Cataponera for it, and, as present-day genera go, it is fully entitled to this rank, 
and, with RhaMotorrhinm , Pyrrhocentor , Myza, Cittura, and others, to be cited 
as an ancient Celebesian type. Its affinities, according to Hartert, are to be 
found in the genera Garrulaoc, ranging from the Himalayas to Java, Rhinodchla 
of Sumatra and Borneo, and AXlocotops of Mt. Kini Balu, Borneo; but it differs 
fiom them, and from other allied forms of these regions, in not having the tail 
graduated, but almost square. Rhinodchla^ which also seems to be a mountain- 
haunting genus and strikes us as being most like Cataponera, differs by having 
its tail decurved as well as graduated (the outermost rectrice being 20 mm 
shorter than the middle ones), and its front toes are relatively much shorter^). 
GENUS TRICHOSTOMA Blyth. 
I his genus consists of about half a dozen plain-looking species, with olive, 
grey, and white as their chief colours, in size rather larger than a Sparrow. 
Culmen about as long as the cranium, nearly straight, tip bent down and over- 
lapping the mandible from the notch; nostrils oval, posterior walls membranous; 
rictal bristles large , reaching to the nostril or furth er ; tail rounded , twice as 
long as the tarsus; middle toe and claw nearly as long as the tarsus; wing 
blunt, rounded, 4*** — 8*’“ remiges the longest. 
Occurs from South Tenasserim to Java, Borneo, and Celebes. 
* 206. TRICHOSTOMA OELEBENSIS (Stiickl.). 
North Celebes Babbler. 
Trichostoma celebense (I) Strickl., Contr. Orn. 1849, 127, pi. 35 (front. figure); (2) Blyth, 
Ibis 1867, 2 (footnote); (3) Wald., Tr. Z. S. 1872, Viii, 113; (4) Briiggem. , Abli. 
1) Wg cannot make out what Hr. SliarpG means, in his diagnosis of this genus, by the expression “out- 
stretched feet falling short of tail by twice the length of the tarsus” (Cat. B. VII, 328). In a skin before us 
the feet fall short ot the tip of the tail by about half the length of the tarsus; from the base of the tail, 
certainly, they are distant about twice the length of the tarsus. Are Dr. Sh arp e 's skins prepared in this manner ? 
