720 
Birds of Celebes: Eallidae. 
Distribution. From Java and S. E. Borneo to Australia, Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand, vary- 
ing locally in almost every spot. 
The type of Porphyria calvus was described from Java by Vieillot in 1819 
N. Diet. dHist. Nat. XXVIII, 28). A year later it received the name P. indicus 
from Horsfield, and Vieillot’s name was overlooked, until Mr. Elliot (e 1) 
reinstated it in 1878. Next Temminck in 1826, intimating that be had no 
intention of abandoning his MS name in the Leyden Museum for that of 
Horsfield, published the name smaragdinus for the same bird. Schlegel (c 1) 
indicates two examples in the Leyden Museum from Java as Temminck’s 
types. 
The Blue Coot seems to vary racially in almost every island of the East 
Indies and Australasia, but it also varies very much individually, and with age 
and sex, upon which some light is thrown by the good series from N. Celebes 
in the Dresden Museum. With a hundred specimens from a hundred different 
localities it might be possible to define a hundred different “species”; but, were 
each locality represented by a score of adult birds, we do not believe that any 
race could be clearly marked off from its next neighbours. Local races exist, 
but individual variation is so great that it obliterates the characters which are 
bound to the locality. 
In Java the bird is generally noteworthy for the greenish tint of the 
light blue of its jugulum; in the Siamese and Malayan Peninsula it has a 
gieyish thioat and face [P. edwardsi Elliot'; in S. E. Borneo a young specimen 
examined by Prof. W. Blasius was of very small size; in South Celebes the 
bird, according to Sharpe, is less green than in Java; in North Celebes it is 
also less gTeen, purer blue on the jugulum, and larger; in Ceram, as Schlegel 
says (c 1), it is darker and less green-brown above [P. melanoptera Temm.', and 
Count Salvador! (Orn. Pap. Ill, 252) adds that it is larger here in size, with 
a different shield (a most untrustworthy character), and without the malachite 
tint on the jugulum, etc.; New Guinean birds are united with the Moluccan 
ones by Count Salvador!; they are rather dark, but, judging from two before 
us, cannot be distinguished from many from North Celebes; in the Admiralty 
Islands the bird is said to be greener again above like the Javan form, but 
bigger and with a different shield (_P. ellioti Salvad.); in New Britain it is greener 
above than in Java and smaller than in the Admiralty Islands [P. neohrittanicus 
Meyer), the Pelew Islands harbour a very similar form with more blue on the 
primaries, and the breast and under-parts apparently more uniform [P. peleivensis 
H. &F.); the birds inhabiting the Fiji Islands were held by Drs. Finsch and 
Hartlaub to be more olive above than calvus and less brilliant blue on the neck 
and breast [P. vitiensis Peale); in Samoa the bird tends to still lighter olive 
[P. samoensis Peale); from Aneiteum in the New Hebrides Canon Tristram 
has described a larger bird as half-way between P. calvus and melanonotus of 
Australia and New Zealand (P. aneiteumensis) ; Vate in the New Hebrides has 
