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POMA'TORHINUS RUFICEPS, Haru. 
Chestnut-crowned Pomatorhinus. 
Pomatorhinus ruficeps, Wartl, in Cabanis’ Journ, fiir Orn., vol. i. p. 21.—Ib. Mag. de Zool. 1852, p. 816. 
Av the period of my visit to South Australia (1838) the colony was in its infancy, and the city of Adelaide 
a chaotic jumble of sheds and mud huts, with trees growing here and there m the newly marked-ont streets 
and squares. Among these trees Parrakeets of various kinds, and Honey-eaters still more numerous, were 
busily occupied in search of food or otherwise engaged; the former principally among the Lucalypti, while 
the latter paid their devoirs to the Banksie: here and there also might be seen groups of newly-arrived 
emigrants, both English and Irish, who had chosen this distant country for their future home; groups of 
Germans, too, whose fatherland no longer offered opportunities for enterprise, were dotted about the country 
busily engaged in constructing their little yillages and getting their gardens under cultivation. It was one 
of these German emigrants, whose name I have heard, but which I now forget, who, mspired by the works 
of nature with which he was so profusely surrounded, employed some of his leisure hours in collecting the 
novel ornithological forms which came under his notice and transmitting them to the Museum at Bremen. 
Among the birds so collected and transmitted was the present new and very beautiful Pomatorhinus, the 
discovery of which has both surprised and gratified me: to me, indeed, as the author of the “ Birds of 
Australia,” it is of especial interest ; and not the less so from the singular circumstance that it should have 
escaped the researches of Sir George Grey, Captain Sturt, and every other person who has attended to 
ornithological science since the establishment of the colony; a very fine species it certainly is, and so pre- 
cisely does it accord in form with the other Australian members of the genus, that, had it been shown me 
without its habitat being mentioned, I should undoubtedly have named Australia as the country to which it 
belonged. Dr. Hartlaub of Bremen, to whom among many other favours Tam indebted for the loan of the 
specimen from which my figure is taken, has given a description of this species, and assigned it the specific 
appellation of rufieeps m the first volume of Cabanis’ “Journal fiir Ornithologie” above quoted, with the 
following remarks, which I beg to transcribe :— 
«Of this fine and typical species the Bremen Collection received two examples, scarcely differmg in 
colour, in a collection of South Australian birds sent from Adelaide. It 1s remarkable that the bird escaped 
the researches of Mr. Gould and his collectors, and one cannot help imagining that it must have recently 
arrived from some part of the interior of the country, and accompanied other stragglers towards the coast. 
“In size and colour P. ruficeps is more nearly allied to P. supereiliosus than to any other, but it differs 
from that species in the brown-red colour of the head, im the white bars on the wings, and in the black mark 
which separates the reddish-brown of the flanks from the white of the breast. In our two specimens the 
sexes have not been ascertained ; one of them is rather less brilliantly coloured than the other.” 
Crown of the head and nape chestnut- or brown-red, bounded below by a conspicuous line of white; lores 
blackish-brown; behind the eye and ear-coverts brown ; upper part of the back and wing-coverts grey, each 
feather with a dark brown centre, giving those parts a mottled appearance ; lower part of the back and 
rump pure dark grey; greater and lesser wing-coverts and secondaries tipped with white; throat, breast 
and centre of the abdomen white; flanks reddish-brown, separated from the white of the abdomen by a 
stripe of black ; under tail-coverts brown, spotted with wreyish-white ; four central bal-feothers dark brown, 
indistinetly rayed with black; the three outer feathers on each side brown, largely tipped with pure white : 
bill and feet blackish horn-colour, the base of the mandibles lighter. 
The figures are of the size of life. 
