| OCR Text |
Show 1887.] MR. H. SEEBOHM ON A NEW MERULA. 557 12. Description of a supposed new Species of the Genus Merula from South America. By H E N R Y S E E B O H M , F.Z.S. [Received June 23, 1887.] In the years 1845-47 the world was circumnavigated by the Danish ship « Galathea,' whose adventures are narrated by Capt. Steen Bille in a book bearing the title " Beretning om Corvetten Galathea'sReise omkringjorden"(Copenhagen, 1849-51). Dr. Behn was the zoologist of the expedition, and amongst other things made a collection of birds, which appears to have been buried for forty years in the museum of the Zoologischer Institut in Kiel. In the months of July and August 1847, Dr. Behn appears to have travelled in the valley of the Parana in South America, for on the 10th of August he shot an example of Turdus albiventris at Jaragua, having previously shot an example of the same species on the llth of July in the valley of the Rio Grande in the Province of Sao Paulo. Two days earlier (on the 9th of July) he appears to have been at a place called Jutuba, which is presumably in the same valley of Southern Brazil. Here he obtained a Thrush which appears to belong to an undescribed species. I am indebted to the kindness of Herr Paul Leverkiihn for an opportunity of examining the collection of Thrushes in the Museum at Kiel. Professor Mobius, the Director of the Zoological Institute, has placed the birds in the collection in the hands of this gentleman for examination and determination. Herr Leverkiihn proposes to call this new species of Thrush MERULA SUBALARIS, sp. nov. Similis M. nigricipiti, sed axillaribus et subalaribus albis ; gula et subcaudalibus albescentioribus; pileo vix nigrescente. The skin is marked a male, and has the throat white streaked with black as in M. nigriceps and M. reevii. There can be little doubt that, like the two latter species, which are its nearest allies, and like M.flavipes and M. leucops, which are its next nearest relations., the new species M. subalaris has an olive-brown female. There is a good figure of M. nigriceps in P. Z. S. 1874, pl. Ixiv., which shows the nearly black crown of that species, but does not display the slate-grey axillaries and under wing-coverts, the two most striking characters which distinguish it from its eastern ally, in which the crown is a scarcely darker slate-grey than the rest of the upper parts, and the axillaries and under wing-coverts are, many of them, pure white. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1887, No. XXXVII. 37 |
