Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 2).djvu/226

212 nape, back, and scapulars black, each feather margined with light brown ; rump rosy red with dusky tips ; upper tail-coverts brown, with black shafts ; wing-coverts dark brown with pale brown margins, the lesser series washed with rosy ; quills and tail dark brown, very narrowly margined paler ; a streak behind the eye and the sides of the neck and of the body pale brown, streaked with dark brown ; cheeks, ear-coverts, chin, throat, and breast crimson, most of the feathers with white terminal shaft-streaks : abdomen ashy brown, sparingly streaked with black; under tail-coverts brown, margined with pink.

Female. The whole upper plumage, wings and tail, sides of the head and neck dark brown, each feather margined with pale brow T n and those of the rump with dull greenish ; lower plumage pale fulvous with narrow black streaks, the breast more or less suffused with buff.

Bill horny brown.

Length 7*5 ; tail 3*2 ; wing 4*4; tarsus '9 ; bill from gape *6.

Sharpe has separated as a subspecies, under the name of P. liumii, a pale race of this bird with the red parts of the head and breast rosy, not crimson, and the brown of the back quite pale. The frontal band is also much broader, extending back as far as the middle of the eye. The female has the rump-feathers broadly margined with olive-yellow. In the British Museum there is a pair of these birds procured in Kansu ; one bird from Tibet ; another from the " Borenda Pass ; " and a fifth from Kotgarh. Altogether I am not satisfied that this race, as found in the Himalayas, is worthy of separation from P. punicea.

Distribution. The Himalayas from Kashmir to Sikhim, at eleva- tions of from 10,000 to 17,000 feet, according to season, and extending into Tibet and Western China.

Habits, fyc. Stoliczka found this Finch in Spiti and Ladak searching after food at the camping-grounds, and he also records the finding of a nest made of coarse grass and placed in a furze bush. The eggs were dirty white or greenish with some dark brown spots.

Genus PKOPASSER, Hodgs., 1844.

The genus Propasser belongs to the Bose-Finches, the males of which are characterized by rose-coloured plumage, and the females by streaked brown plumage. The birds of this genus may be separated from those of the next genus Carpodacus, by the presence of a supercilium in both sexes and by the bluntness of the wing, the secondaries falling short of the tip of the wing by a distance less than the length of the tarsus. The bill of Propasser is of much the same shape as that of Hcematospiza, but smaller in comparison to the size of the head.