AUSTRALIAN WHITE-CAPPED NODDY. 
Crown of the head and nape of the neck white ; lores and space surrounding the eye 
deep black ; near the posterior angle of the upper and lower eyelids a small patch of white ; 
breast, all the under surface and the wdngs deep sooty black ; back of the neck, back and 
tail the same, slightly tinged with ash ; bill black ; feet brownish black. 
Total length, 14 inches ; bill ; wing 9 ; tail 5 ; tarsi ; middle toe and nail 1|. 
Hab. North coasts of Australia. 
Almost simultaneously in the Genera of Birds, Vol. III., pi. 182, p. 661, 
1846, a beautiful figure of a bird was given under the name Anous melano- 
genys, but no locality was added. The part in which this appeared is dated 
January, 1846, so that if this bird was the same as Gould’s bird, the latter 
was earlier, having appeared in December, 1845. It seems strange that no 
one has carefuUy studied this figure as it is splendidly drawn and well 
coloured, and easily recognisable. 
The next name to be introduced for a species of this group was 
A. hawaiiensis Rothschild {Bull. Brit. Orn. Club., No. X., p. Lvn., 1893), 
who proposed it as follows : — 
Anous hawaiiensis. 
This species, which is confined to the Hawaiian groups of islands, differs from its 
nearest congener, A. melanogenys Gray, in that the grey colour, instead of being confined 
to the crown of the head, is spread over the neck and interscapular region. The tail and 
rump also, instead of being black, are pale grey. Under surface of neck also slightly 
washed with grey, instead of being uniform black as in A, melanogenys. The wing in 
the new species seems to be shorter, varying from 0.5 to 0.75 inch. The beak is 
slightly stouter and a little less pointed. 
This identification of A. melanogenys was apparently based upon that of 
Saunders’s, who in his “Revision of the Sternince'''^ {Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lend.) 
1876, p. 670), admitted both A. melanogenys and A. leucoca'pillus, and gave 
figures of the heads of the two species included : the former name was used 
for the common species while the latter was apparently accepted for the young 
of the former. At any rate, the bird figured was from Bristow Island, south 
coast of New Guinea, and has since been recognised as the juvenile stage of 
A. “ leucoca'pillus,^'' while Saunders’s “A. melanogenys ” was the adult. 
In the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. 1894, Stone wrote up a Revision of the 
genus Anous, and noting that Gould’s types of A. leucocapillus differed from 
Saunders’s drawing of A. leucocapillus, named the latter. Stone also observed 
that if Gray’s melanogenys was identical with Gould’s leucocapillus then Gray’s 
figure was very bad, and therefore questionably included the former napie 
in the synonymy of the latter. When Saunders monographed the Terns in the 
Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., Vol. XXV., he accepted A. melanogenys as a synonym 
of A. leucocapillus and also included Stone’s A. atrofuscus in the synonymy. 
Rothschild’s A. hawaiiensis was considered a distinct species, and there was 
added the note : “ Since Mr. Rothschild named the species, a specimen of 
which he has presented, I have discovered another example in the Museum 
VOL. n. 
421 
