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Show 1886.] MR. SHARPE ON BIRDS IN THE HUME COLLECTION. 353 beak crimson-red. Had just caught and partly eaten a large spider." Fam. TROGONIDiE. H A R P A C T E S D U V A U C E L I , Temm.; Gould, Monogr. Trogon. 2nd ed. pi. 40. "No. 15. Male. Irides brown ; bill pure cobalt-blue. Hills up to about 2000 feet." 7. Notes on Specimens in the Hume Collection of Birds. By R. B O W D L E R SHARPE, F.L.S. &C. [Received June 18, 1886.] (Continued from p. 97.) CONTENTS. NO. 2. On some Rose-Finches, p. 353. No. 3. On Lalage melanothorax, p. 354. No. 4. On some Flycatchers of the Genus Siphia, p. 354. No. 2. On some Rose-Finches. In 1881 Colonel Biddulph (Ibis, 1881, p. 156, pi. vi.) noticed the differences between the large Rose-Finches of Yarkand and those of the Gilgit district, in which he had been resident for some time, and named the former bird Propasser rhodometopus. Having lately had occasion to examine the series of Rose-Finches in the H u m e Collection, I was able to discriminate the P. rhodometopus of Biddulph as distinct from P. rhodochlamys of Indian authors, from the Himalayas. The two species are very nearly allied, but the Yarkand bird has silvery pointed feathers on the forehead, which the Himalayan bird has not. At the same time Colonel Biddulph has, I believe, fallen into an error in his identification of the true P. rhodochlamys of Brandt, which was described from the Altai Mountains, and appears to me to be identical with the Yarkand bird, but not with P. rhodochlamys (so-called) from the Himalayas. Brandt in his original description (Bull. Phys.-Math. Acad. Sci. St. Petersb. 1843, p. 363) distinctly says " Pennae frontales, verticis, gutturis &c. acuminata?;" and this seems to point undoubtedly to the species afterwards called P. rhodometopus by Biddulph. Consequently the Himalayan species must require a separate designation, which is forthcoming in Propasser grandis (Blyth, J. A. S. Beng. xviii. p. 810). Mr. Seebohm has lent me specimens of Carpodacus rubicillus from the Caucasus, and on comparing them with examples of so-called G. rubicillus from Turkestan and Yarkand, which have the back almost entirely uniform, and narrow black shaft-streaks on the under tail-coverts, I find that the two species are not identical. |
