634 
Birds of Celebes: Oolmnbidae. 
Adult. Blackish slaty; chin, throat, cheeks and ear-coverts white; head above 
glossed with magenta-pui-ple, becoming more wine-purple on mantle; neck, and 
fore neck; upper parts and wing-coverts bordered with metallic broime-green 
and purple; vender parts more broadly bordered with purple-bronze; quills and 
tail above and below black; “bill red, tip white, iris oclme-orange; orbits red; feet 
dull coral-red, claws pale” — Wallace f (Tagulandang Id., Aug. 18fl4: Nat. 0 oil. 
— 0 13446). 
Immature. With the purple-red feathers of the jugulum and breast mixed with others of 
reddish brown (Huang Id., Aug. 1894, Nat. Ooll. — 0 13448). 
Young. “Throat ashy, metallic edges of the feathers less conspicuous, crown, lower part of 
front neck, and upper breast brownish; bill and feet brown” (Salvad. 1). 
Measurements (4 ex. Ruang and Tagulandang). Wing 224—240 mm; tail 135 150; tarsus 
27 — 28; bill from feathers of forehead 21 — 22. 
Distribution. From the Louisiade Islands, S. E. and N. W. New Guinea, Kei, Waigiou, Sala- 
watti, Mysol, Ceram, Bum, Temate, Halmahera, Morty, Raou (Salvadori a 5, a 7); 
Tagulandang and Ruang (Nat. Ooll. in Dresden and Tring Museums), Banggai 
(Dresd. Mus. 2). 
This Pigeon is a new and somewhat unexpected addition to the avifauna 
of the Celehesian subregion. Several examples of it were shot by our native 
hunters in August, 1893, on the island of Tagulandang and on the volcano of Ruang 
or Gunong api (Fire Mountain), which rises from the sea close to the south of 
the former island. The volcano is active and dangerous; in 1871 a disastrous 
eruption, which was witnessed by Meyer, took place (Nature 1871, r\', 286; 
Row!., Orn.Misc. 1878, III, 324). “Except on the E.S.E. side tkere was no green, 
not a tree to be seen, and here only sparingly and in strips. All that had remained 
from the eruption of the 27*^^ August, 1870, was destroyed by that of the 
2"« 14*^^ March, 1871; before that time Ruang was clothed to its summit with vege- 
tation. The naiTowest place between Tagulandang and Ruang is about half an 
English mile” (Diary). Another eruption took place in 1874, When Dr. Hickson 
visited the island in 1885 it was only covered with underwood, and Hickson 
rightly concluded that the whole of the high forest has been destroyed during the 
eruption of 1871 (Nat. in N. Celebes 1889, 45). 
One may assume that Ruang (though not Tagulandang) has been colonised 
by its present stock of birds chiefly since 1871, or, perhaps, since the second 
eruption of 1874, for the destruction of the forests means destruction of the 
food of the birds which dwell therein. These two small islands form the only 
point of the Celehesian subregion where the white-throated Pigeon occurs; its 
presence there is only to be accounted for on the ground of its having reached 
the islands by flight and, so far as Ruang is concerned, since 1871! 
C. alUgularis has close affinities with C. hypoenochroa (Gld.) of New Cale- 
donia and the Loyalty Islands, which has the head above, neck and jugulum 
purple -chestnut, and C. vitiensis Q. &G. of Fiji, smaller with a reddish breast 
and blackish claws; also with C.leopoldi (Tristr.) of the Ncav Hebrides, C.castaneiceps 
') By a lapsus calami we wrote Talaut for Ruang in 1896 (‘ 2 ). 
