Page:Stray feathers. Journal of ornithology for India and its dependencies (IA strayfeathersjou11873hume).pdf/43

Rh of the summer plamage of the same species. Briefly, the differences of these three forms may be thus described: in Luzoniensis, the whole of the front of the head as far back as the crown, lores, and the whole of the face, sides of the neck, chin and throat are pure white; occiput, nape, mantle, and a broad band on the breast are black; in Hodgsoni, only the front of the head, lores, orbital region, and ear-coverts, chin, and upper portion of the throat are white; the whole of the rest of the sides of the neck and throat have become unbroken black, joined into the breast band, and from the gape, a narrow black line runs below the orbital region and ear-coverts, dividing these from the white of the chin and upper throat and joining into the black of the sides of the neck; the major portion of the visible parts of the wing coverts of Luzoniensis are white, and the quills, too, are margined with white; the secondaries more broadly towards their tips; in Hodgsoni, there is even more white upon the wing.

There can, I think, be no doubt, that Hodgsoni is only a somewhat more advanced stage than Luzoniensis, and I may notice that both forms are beautifully figured in Mr. Hodgson's drawings now before me, and that he recognized their indentity, assigning to both the name of Alboiodes. When we turn to Lugens as figured by Schlegel, Fauna Japonica, the lores, the whole of the space below the eye, and the eye coverts have become black; the frontal patch only extends backwards as far as the front of the eye over which it extends as a supercilium; the white of the chin is still further contracted than in Hodgsoni, and there is, if possible, even more white on the wing than in this latter species; this is a still nearer approach to the full breeding plumage.

The full breeding plumage has never, I believe, been yet described. I have had specimens, typical of each of the three forms above described, obtained in the Himalayas, at different times of the year, between April and September; but specimens killed at the end of May and early in June, shew what the full breeding plumage is; namely the whole chin, throat, and top of the head, with the mantle, sides of the neck, and back pure velvet black; and the white, which in each preceding stage was gradually diminishing, now reduced to a somewhat narrow frontal band, continued as a superciliary stripe over the eye and backwards over the ear-coverts. If any one insists upon making a fourth species out of this full breeding stage, he may call it Superciliaris; but I do not myself doubt that one and all are stages of the same species. I should mention that in the final stage the closed wing books almost entirely white.