354 
Mr. J. H. Gurney^’s Notes, on 
wished:—Upon a Helotarsus ecaudatus I could to-day 
distinctly recognize white shoulder-feathers {H. leuconotuSy 
Pr. Paul of Wurtemberg). This, however, as I can with per¬ 
fect certainty assert, is nothing hut a variety of age. Ulivi, 
a merchant at Chartum, has for more than a twelvemonth 
kept such a bird in confinement. It appeared to me to be 
two years old, and has, in its last moult, from February to 
April, also obtained white shoulder-feathers, which before 
were wanting.^-’ [Vide ^Naumannia,^ 1852, p. 50.) 
I regret that I can throw no further light upon this ques¬ 
tion ; but I may add that, according to my observation, the 
creamy-backed specimens [H. leuconotus) are more rarely sent 
to this country than the rufous-backed {H. ecaudatus), and 
especially so from Southern Africa, where H. leuconotus 
appears to be scarcer than it is to the north of the equator. 
Both in Helotarsus ecaudatus and also in H. leuconotus the 
colouring of the wing is subject to a curious diflerence in adult 
specimens, which is not referred to by Mr. Sharpe, but which 
has engaged the attention of various other ornithologists, 
though hitherto without its being satisfactorily accounted for. 
This difference may be briefly described as follows :—In some 
adults all the secondary feathers are black, tinged with green 
on the outer and with brown on the inner webs, and the 
greater coverts are of an intense black, without an apparent 
tinge of any other colour; whilst in other adults the greater 
coverts are, with the exception of more or less black on some 
of the feathers, coloured like the lesser and median coverts, 
i. e. a lustrous stone- or wood-brown, and the secondaries 
(except those nearest the body, which are either black or 
brown more or less tinged with black) are of a greyish brown 
colour with black tips, the grey-brown forming a conspicuous 
bar across the folded wing. 
The late Jules Verreaux considered this greyish bar to be 
peculiar to the female bird; and the following note on the 
subject is extracted from a letter which he wrote to me in the 
year 1864 Quant an sujet de VHelotarsus, vous nfignorez 
pas, sans doute, la difference immense qui existe dans les ailes 
entre les sexes; la femelle a les remiges secondaires presque 
entierement nuancees de gris, tandis que le m&le n^en a guere 
