MELIDECTES EMILII, Meyer. 
Count Turati’s Honey-sucker. 
Melidectes torquatus (nec Scl.), Sharpe, Journ. Linn. Soc. xvi. p. 438 (1883). 
Melidectes emilii, Meyer, in Madarasz’s Zeitschr. fur gesammte Ornithologie, hi. p. 22, Taf. iv. fig. 2 (1886). 
The first occurrence of this spec es in South-eastern New Guinea was recorded by us in 1883, when 
Mr. Goldie’s collections from the Astrolabe Mountains reached England. We then compared specimens 
with the plate of M. torquatus from the Arfak Mountains, figured in the present work, and were unable to see 
any differences between them ; but Dr. Meyer, who had examples before him from the Horseshoe range of 
the Astrolabe Mountains, compared them with others from North-western New Guinea, and described the 
southern bird as M. emilii, naming it after Count Emilio Turati of Milan. 
We have no doubt that Dr. Meyer, having specimens from both the north-west and south-east of New 
Guinea, was able to form a more correct judgment than we were, and that he was perfectly right in 
separating M. emilii from M. torquatus, although the differences are very slight, consisting in the pale under 
surface and smaller white throat-spot in the southern bird. We have lately seen several specimens from the 
Astrolabe range, all of which bore out the characters assigned to M. emilii by Dr. Meyer, and we therefore 
fully believe in the distinctness of the species. Besides the specimens obtained by Mr. Goldie in the 
Morocco district, where it is called by the natives ‘ Ugirru,’ it has been met with in the Horseshoe range 
by Mr. Hunstein, and by Mr. H. O. Forbes in the Sogeri district. 
It is from specimens obtained in the last-named locality that the figures in the Plate have been drawn. 
[R. B. S.] 
