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Show 1871.] MR. SHARPE ON MACHIRHAMPHUS ANDERSSONI. 501 Mr. Bartlett, remembering that at the time the Damara birds were bought a great number of Malaccan specimens were also purchased, concluded that the collections had been mixed, and that thus the Damara bird had come to be credited with a Malaccan habitat. Acqui-esing in Mr. Bartlett's identification, Mr. Gurney sunk his proposed name of Stringonyx anderssoni, and his specimen was figured in the ' Transactions ' as Machcerhamphus alcinus. Thus the matter remained till the year 1868, when in Mr. Andersson's last collection another specimen was sent home, and passed into the National collection, where it now remains. Mr. Gurney requested me to send him m y opinion upon the specific identity of this last specimen with the figure of M. alcinus (I. ci). I therefore took up the subject, and I found that the bird sent by Mr. Andersson was identical with the one previously transmitted by him and figured in the ' Transactions' (I. c.); but the absence of a crest in both these birds, added to a white eye-ring and abdomen, which did not appear in the Malaccan bird, induced me to suggest to Mr. Gurney the possibility of their being distinct species, while, from an examination of the figures of the tarsi given in the respective works above quoted, I inclined to believe in their belonging really to two distinct genera. Mr. Gurney shortly after visited Leyden ; and having critically examined the Damara bird in the British Museum before starting, he told me on his return that he fully believed in its specific and generic identity with the type of M. alcinus at Leyden. Acquiescing at once in the opinion of so distinguished an authority on Accipitres as Mr. Gurney, I allowed the subject to drop for a time, till all m y doubts were agaiu revived by m y friend M . Jules Verreaux, to whom I referred the controversy during his recent sojourn in England, when he informed me that I was quite right in insisting on the specific distinctness of the two species, for that he had lately seen both old and young birds of the true M. alcinus from Malacca in Count Turati's collection. This information urged me once more upon the scent; but I was unable to discover any new facts bearing upon the subject, till in a recent collection formed by the late Dr. Maingay at Malacca, which has passed entire into Lord Walden's hands, I was delighted to perceive at last a specimen oiM. alcinus. Thus the question was solved as far as regards the correctness of the habitat; and on comparing the specimen lately received with the Damara bird in the British Museum, I am able to state the following facts. Although the legs are damaged in the Damara bird, there is, so far as we can see, no real difference in the scaling of the tarsi, as would appear from the figures given in the works before mentioned ; so that Mr. George Robert Gray and I quite agree that, beyond the occipital crest in the Malaccan bird (which it is not yet proved that the Damara species, when adult, does not assume), the two species cannot be generically separated ; and I am glad to have had this veteran ornithologist at my elbow, as it is a bold thing to assert the absolute similarity between two genera belonging to such widely distant localities. As regards specific characters we both agree that the birds are quite distinct. |