WHITEFACE. 
central regions ; evidently this bird was mistaken by the Horn Expedition 
for it.” He otherwise referred to it as resembling “ both A. leucopsis and 
A. p. castaneiventris He sent me specimens and I described them as A. 
castaneiventris whitei and he further wrote: “ This subspecies was plentiful 
all through the Musgrave and Everard Ranges, but none were met with between 
the Cooper and Strzelecki Creeks, their place being taken by A. leucopsis .” 
Carter has recently written : “ Several small parties of Murchison White- 
face were seen in mid-September, 1916, in scrubby country between the Lower 
Gascoyne and Minilya rivers, where I had never previously seen any of these 
birds ; but I had obtained specimens in 1904 at Mullewa, three hundred miles 
to the south. Shortridge found them ‘ fairly numerous as far north as the 
Upper Gascoyne River (Clifton Downs Station) ’ in 1908 ; so, at present, the 
locality where my specimens were obtained is the most northerly record, being 
sixty miles farther north, and about one hundred nearer to the coast (west¬ 
wards) than Clifton Downs. The birds were tame, feeding on the ground 
below short scrub, into which they took shelter when disturbed. . . The 
Minalya birds are more rufous on the mantle than any of the others (specimens 
in the Brit. Mus.), which were mostly obtained in localities to the south-east 
—as Laverton, 600 miles south-east from the Minilya, and Day Dawn, about 
300 miles to the south-east. . . The specimens from Day Dawn are almost 
white on the whole of the under-surface and can be separated easily from 
any of the others.” 
Milligan’s diagnosis reads X. castaneiventris “may be distinguished from 
(a) X. leucopsis by the presence of a thicker bill and of deep dull chestnut, 
rump, flanks, and sides, and a chestnut and white abdomen, and white chin,, 
throat, and chest, and of the absence of the faint subterminal cross bars on 
the breast; ( b) from X. pectoralis principally by the absence of the chestnut- 
brown back and the well defined pectoral band of cinnamon-brown and the 
chestnut and white flanks, which in the new species are almost uniform 
chestnut; and (c) from X. nigricincta by the absence of the narrow black 
pectoral band and the cinnamon back which distinguish that species. The: 
new species appears to occupy an intermediate position between X. pectoralis; 
and X. nigricincta.” 
This species was accepted as valid, and when I prepared my “ Reference' 
List ” in 1912 from Gould’s description I regarded it as the western represen¬ 
tative of A. pectoralis, and this was continued in my 1913 “ List.” 
Captain White’s discovery of a Central Australian bird which resembled 
both A. pectoralis and castaneiventris complicated matters and I described 
this as 
Aphelocephala castaneiventris whitei. 
35 
