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Show 316 MR. W. T. BLANFORD ON THE [Mar. 28, C. micropterus. Of the two other Indian species of Cuculus admitted by Jerdon, one called by him C. striatus, Drapiez (C. affinis, Hay), is now generally admitted not to be distinct from C. micropterus, whilst the other, C. sonnerati, is, I think, rightly placed in a separate genus, Penthoceryx, by Cabanis. About the specific names of three of the four Cuckoos above enumerated, C. canorus, C. poliocephalus, and C. micropterus, there has never been any question. But the species described by Jerdon as the Himalayan Cuckoo, or Cuculus himalayanus, has been singularly unfortunate in this respect; it has received several specific names of its own, and yet has always, despite various changes of nomenclature, appeared in systematic works under a title that, so far as I can ascertain, does not belong to it. Blyth, who had in 1846 (J. A. S. B. xv. p. 18) rightly distinguished this species as C. saturatus, Hodgson, and regarded C. himalayanus, Vigors, as a synonym of C. poliocephalus, in his Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of the Asiatic Society, published in 1849, entered the name of the Himalayan Cuckoo (to prevent confusion I employ Jerdon's English name) thus : " C. himalayanus, Vigors, (nee apud Gould, Century, pi. 54); " and kept only " C. himalayanus, apud Gould, Cent." as a synonym of C. poliocephalus, evidently supposing that the bird described by Vigors, P. Z. S. 1831, p. 172, belonged to a different species from that figured in Gould's ' Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains' (1832). But Mr. Vigors, at the commencement of his descriptions of new species, including C. himalayanus, expressly stated (I. c. p. 170) that all the birds described by him belonged to " the sixth and last portion of the species comprising the ' Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains' drawn and lithographed by Mr. and Mrs. Gould," so that it appears certain that the actual specimen figured in the 'Century' as C. himalayanus was also described by Vigors under that name. In all probability Blyth, who always wrote under great disadvantages from want of access to books, had not Vigors's paper to refer to, and depended on a copy of the description. Horsfield and Moore, in their ' Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of the East India Company,' and Jerdon in the ' Birds of India,' copied Blyth's mistake. In ' The Ibis' for 1866, p. 359, in his commentary on Jerdon's ' Birds of India,' Blyth, following Sehlegel (Mus.. Pays-Bas, Cuculi, p. 7) adopted the name Cuculus striatus for the Himalayan Cuckoo, though he expressed his doubts in a footnote whether Drapiez's description (Diet. Class. d'Hist. Nat. iv. p. 570) did not agree better with C. micropterus. However, from 1866 the name C. striatus was generally used for the bird by Indian ornithologists until recently, although Jerdon (Ibis, 1872, p. 12) did not accept the term. The various plumages of the three closely allied Cuckoos, C. canorus, the Himalayan Cuckoo (under the name of C. striatus), and C. poliocephalus, were first, I think, clearly discriminated by |
