290 
Lord Walden on Mr. Allan Hume’s 
Hume's observations on Dr. FinsclPs account of this species. 
Mr. Hume carefully abstains from stating the name of a single 
observer with whose investigations Dr. Finsch ought to have 
been acquainted, and “ in the face of whose evidence ” Dr. 
Finsch “ flies.” Nor does he dare to name one of the “ dozen 
different observers ” whom “ our author absolutely ignores,” 
nor of the “ naturalists ” who “ have already recorded to a 
similar effect.” Since Layard and Kelaart, that is since 
1868, the only Ceylon naturalists who have written in any 
accessible, even if any, scientific journal on Ceylon ornitho¬ 
logy are Holdsworth, Vincent Legge, and Hugh Nevill; and 
the first is the only one who has touched on the point at 
issue, and then only in 1872. 
The next Indian species known to Mr. Hume, Pal&ornis 
melanorhynchus , Wagler, was divided by Dr. Finsch, guided 
by the evidence existing in 1868 (Papag. ii. pp. 66, 70), into 
two species—P. lathami, Finsch, with the maxilla red in both 
sexes, and P. melanorhynchus, Wagler, with the bill, in both 
sexes, black. Subsequent investigations have led to the con¬ 
clusion that these are sexual differences, and that only the 
adult male possesses a red maxilla, while the young birds and 
adult females possess black bills (conf. Walden, Ibis, 1873, 
p. 297, no. 2). For his conclusion, erroneous though it 
may now prove to be, Dr. Finsch is assailed with a volley 
of silly invective. Let, then, the facts before Dr. Finsch 
the facts recorded up to 1868, be examined. In the first 
place both Jerdon and Blyth confounded, by erroneous iden¬ 
tification, the Indian bird and the Javan and Bornean P. alex- 
andri (Birds of Ind. i. p. 263; Ibis, 1866, p. 353), and Dr. 
Finsch had therefore good grounds for being uncertain as to 
which of the two species they referred. Jerdon further de¬ 
scribed the bird as having “a large red - * patch on the wing, 
formed by most of the lesser and some of the median coverts ” 
(/. c.), which is not the case, as Dr. Finsch acutely remarks. 
Hodgson regarded the black-billed bird as belonging to a di¬ 
stinct species and named it P. nigrirostris (Gray, Zool. Misc. 
p. 85, 1844), and in the f Calcutta Journal of Natural History J 
* I suspect that the word “ red ” is a slip of the pen for yellow. 
