506 
Birds of Celebes: Timeliidae. 
best be distinguished by its fulvous, not olivaceous grey, breast and sides, and 
by its having the region round the eye fulvous. AndrofhUus castaneus (Biltt.) 
of N. Celebes may be known by its white superciliary streak, dark chestnut- 
umber upper surface and sides and much smaller size, as well as by the rictal 
bristles being unnoticeably small, and by its having 10 rectrices. Dr. Sharpe 
places T.celehensis between T.abbotti (Blyth), which ranges from the Himalayas 
to Borneo, and T.ffularis (Sharpe) of West Africa, but Mr. Biittikofer rele- 
gates both these species to other genera, and places the Celebesian form next 
to T. rostratum Blyth, of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo. 
Mr. Wallace comments upon the rarity of the Timeliidae in Celebes 
(Geogr. Distr. 1876, I, 430), and with right. The only members of the family 
yet known from the Province are Malia (peculiar), dole, Trichostoma, Androphilus, 
Cisticola (which is better placed among the Sylviidae) and looking thi’ough the 
Timeliine groups contained in the seventh volume of the Catalogue of Birds 
alone, we find Dr. Sharpe numbers nearly 80 genera from the Indian Region, 
while Mr. Everett in his List of the Birds of Borneo (1889, p. 91 sq., J. Str. Br. 
R. As. S.) names 39 genera (if we count the Brachypodidae only as a subfamily 
of the Timeliidae) as occurring in Borneo alone. Australia and Papuasia, though 
far less wealthy in genera than the Indian Region, are very well off when 
compared with the strange rarity of these birds in Celebes and the Moluccas. 
Another curious point is, apparently, the somewhat frequent occurrence of the 
same genus and closely allied sjaecies in the Indian Region and Africa south 
of the Sahara, while the whole family is known by a very few forms only in 
the Palaearctic Region. The last point is, how’ever, partly to be explained on 
the ground that ornithologists have been overcareful to uphold the Palaearctic 
Thrushes, W^arblers, and Shrikes as distinct families, throwing aside their varied 
host of exotic allies as “Timeliidae”. The simplest way of accounting for this 
rarity of the family in Celebes and the Moluccas and the similarity of some of 
its forms in Africa and the Indian Region seems to be on the large assumption 
that its distribution was once much what it is now, but extended further north 
until the last glacial period, which drove certain forms south of the Sahara and 
of the Himalayas, while a few non-migratory forms crossed to the islands of 
Celebes and of the Moluccas. As a few forms of the Indian Region and 
Australia are identical, though as a rule Australia has its own genera, the further 
supposition would have to be made that such wandered to Australia at the same 
time. We have even species belonging to the same genus (Sphenoeacus), according 
to Sharpe, in South Africa and New Zealand. 
* 207. TKIOHOSTOMA FINSOHI Tweedd. 
South Celebes Babbler. 
a. Trichostoma celebense (1) Wald, (nee Strickl), Tr. Z. S. 1872, Vni, 62; (2) Pinsch & 
Conrad, Verb. z.-b. G-es. Wien 1873, 2, 9 (sep. copy); (3) Biittik. , Notes Leyden 
