350 *Mr. H. Seebohm on the Ornithology of Siberia. 
lost the scent altogether in Middendorff^s ^ Sibirische Reise/ 
p. 166 (1851). Since Professor Newton has not been able 
to kill this rat_, as^ I think_, we may fairly infer from the foot¬ 
note already referred to (Newton’s ^ Yarrell/ i. p. 541), I am 
driven to the conclusion that lugenSy 111./^ and lugubris, 
Pall.,^^ quoted by Middendorff, are both myths. My next 
attempt was to try and catch a M. lugens of Pallas, or of any 
body else. I had nearly as many stumbles in this as in the 
previous runs. In the ^ Fauna Japonica^ Schlegel gives a 
reference to Temminck’s ^Manuel’ as part iii. p. 620,^^ which 
ought to be read ‘^‘^part iv. p. 620,’’ an error which I found he 
had previously made in his ^ Rev. Crit. des Ois. d’Eur.’ p. 68. 
In spite of these difficulties I did not lose the scent until 1832, 
where, so far as I have been able to trace it, M. lugens, 
Pallas, appears for the first time in Kittlitz’s Kupfertafeln 
zur Naturgeschichte der Vogel,’ p. 16, pi. 21. fig. 1, from 
Kamtchatka. 
From this peninsula there is fortunately a series of skins 
in the St.-Petersburg Museum, which I had an opportunity 
of examining, and which I identified as M. lugens of Temm. 
& Schl. Kittlitz describes his bird as the commonest sum¬ 
mer bird in Kamtchatka, and remarks that in autumn it has a 
white throat, bounded beneath by black, and an ash-grey back. 
The description is very meagre, and the plate of the bird in 
breeding-dress represents a state of plumage which I have 
not seen. The throat is in full summer plumage, i. e. black 
to the base of the bill, but the cheeks remain in winter plu¬ 
mage. A reference to the excellent plate of M. lugens in the 
^ Fauna Japonica’ (pi. 25) will show that in full breeding- 
plumage the black on the throat extends up to, and forms 
one mass with, the black line through the eye. 
We must admit that the description and also the plate of 
M. lugens, Pallas, apud Kittlitz, are scarcely as satisfactory 
as we could have wished upon which to found a species; but 
as the Japanese bird is the only Pied Wagtail hitherto found 
in Kamtchatka, there is at least a strong probability that 
Kittlitz’s name refers to this bird. There is no evidence to 
prove that' Pallas ever named a bird M. lugens. M. lugens. 
