AUSTRALIAN BROWN-WINGED TERN. 
Brown Tern with the under parts and forehead white, the back variegated. 
New Holland Tern, Lath. Gen. Hist., X., 103. 
Length fourteen or fifteen inches ; beak one inch and a half ; black, curved at the 
tip ; irides blue ; tongue longish and pointed ; top of the head and behind the neck 
brown ; back the same, but darker and mottled ; forehead and all beneath white ; quills 
brown ; reaching much beyond the tail ; legs brown, bare greatly above the knee. Inhabits 
New Holland. Latham. 
Lesson {Traite d’Orn., p. 621, 1831) proposed : — 
Sterna antarctica. Mus. de Paris. Front blanc ; occiput noir ; manteau et ailes 
brun fonce ; bee et tarses noirs. De ITsle-de-France, de Calcutta (Duvaucel). 
In his Birds West Africa^ Vol. II., p. 249, 1837, Swainson added Sterna 
melanoptera. 
Cones, in the Ibis, 1864, p. 392, indicated his belief that the name 
S. panayensis had been misapplied, stating, “ Therefore I consider that the 
name panayensis or panaya Gm.-Lath., is synonymous with fuliginosa Gm. 
If such be the case, then the well-known species now under consideration has 
yet to receive a tenable specific apellation,” and in a footnote added, “ See my 
forthcoming Monograph of the Laridce (where the species is named H. discolor) 
for further elucidation on this point.” 
Lawrence {Ann. Lyc. New York, Vol. VIII., p. 104) used Coues’s name. 
The date of publication of this journal needs examination. The pages are 
dated in rotation, but these dates are not those of publication, yet have been 
quoted as such. Thus this page under consideration is in the part dated 
May, 1864, but Coues’s Ibis paper is therein quoted, and that was not issued 
until December, 1864. 
EUiot {Birds North Amer., Vol. II., 1869, no pagination) used Coues’s 
name for the North American bird, and carefully indicated some of the 
differences apparent between the West Indian bird and the Pacific form. 
He compared Coues’s type but, as my quotation shows, Coues never described 
a bird under the name. Since then no other authors have used it. 
Inasmuch as Coues definitely stated that he would name the species commonly 
(and to him wrongly) called S. panayensis or panaya Gm.-Lath., and more- 
over pointed out that he had examined specimens from all parts of the 
world and they were identical, I reject Coues’s name as a substitute for 
8 . panayensis Auct., and as that has now been proved to be 8 . anoethetus, 
designate the Philippines as the type-locality of H. discolor Coues. I 
expect this will meet with disapproval from some of my American friends, 
as Coues was dealing with an American bird at the time he wrote, but 
I would record that Coues dehberatelv stated that the American and 
«/ 
Australian specimens were absolutely identical, and that he did not name 
an American bird. 
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