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Show 1866 ] MR. p. L. SCLATER ON THE ANATIDCE. 149 Sp. 7. DENDROCYGNA VAGANS. I was not aware when I wrote my previous notes that this species had been described and figured in Fraser's ' Zoologia Typica' (pi. 68) under the M S . name bestowed upon it by Mr. Eyton. There can be no doubt, therefore, that this name should be adopted as its first given and very appropriate designation. Mr. Gould has apparently altogether overlooked my notes on this species, as in his recently published ' Handbook to the Birds of Australia' (vol. ii. p. 374) he calls it Dendrocygna gouldi. But, as I have already shown (P. Z. S. 1864, p. 300), the Australian bird to which the late Prince Charles Bonaparte gave this M S . name is not separable from the Moluccan and Philippine-Island Dendrocygna vagans. I am indebted to my friend Dr. G. Bennett for a notice of the occurrence of this species in a more southern locality than has hitherto been recorded. In a letter from him, dated Sydney, May 19th, 1865, the following passage occurs:- " A curious occurrence took place on March 17th (Easter Monday), being a holiday. When several thousand persons were about the aviary in the Botanic Gardens, three wild Whistling Ducks (Dendrocygna arcuata, Gould) flew down to the tame pair of these birds we have had for some time in a pond in the Gardens. They remained some time swimming about in the pond with them (and could have been easily shot), and then took their departure, and have not been seen since. What renders this more singular is that the Whistling Duck is very rarely or never seen nearer to Sydney than Port Mac-quarie, and principally inhabits the northern districts." Mr. G. R. Gray, in his list of Pacific Island Birds*, has also noted the occurrence of this species in the Fiji Islands. Since I wrote the article above referred to on Dendrocygna, the ^ British Museum has acquired a • specimen of Dendrocygna fulva (Gm.) from Mexico, which I have thus had an opportunity of examining for the first time. This species is very like D. major in form and plumage, and is, in fact, hardly to be distinguished from it except by its smaller size and shorter bill. If, as I believe is the case, though I have not yet had an opportunity of comparing specimens from South America, Dendrocygna rirgata (Max.) is identical with D. fulva, we have three very closely allied species presenting us with the following distribution in the Tropics :- 1. D. vagans, from the Philippines, through the Moluccas, to N.E. Australia and Fiji Islands. 2. D. major, peninsula of India and Madagascar. 3. D. fulva, Central and Southern America. The pair of Variegated Sheldrakes (Tadorna variegata), which I have spoken of in m y notes on the birds of that group (P. Z. S. 1864, p. 190) as having been received from Mr. Sharpley in 1863, bred in the Society's Gardens for the first time in the spring of last year, in * ' Cat. of Birds of the Tropical Islands of the Pacific Ocean in the Collection of the British Museum' (London, 1860), p. 54. |
