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POMATORHINUS RUFICEPS, tart.

Chestnut-crowned Pomatorhinus.

Pomatorhinus ruficeps, Hartl. in Cabanis’ Journ. fiir Orne, yoleip, 21—lihy Mag. de Zool. 1852, p. 316.

 

Ar the period of my visit to South Australia (1838) the colony w

as in its infancy, and the city of Adelaide
a chaotic jumble of sheds and mud huts, with trees growing here

and there in the newly marked-out streets
and squares. Among these trees Parrakeets of various kinds, and Honey-eaters still more numerous, were
busily occupied in search of food or otherwise engaged; the former principally among the Eucalypti, while
an the latter paid their devoirs to the Banksie: here and there also might be seen groups of newly-arrived
, emigrants, both English and Irish, who had chosen this distant country for their future home; groups of
Germans, too, whose fatherland no longer offered opportunities for enterprise, were dotted about the country

 

V Ai busily engaged in constructing their little villages and getting their gardens under cultivation. It was one
A of these German emigrants, whose name I have heard, but which I now forget, who, inspired by the works
of nature with which he was so profusely surrounded, employed some of his leisure hours in collecting the
novel ornithological forms which came under his notice and transmitting them to the Museum at Bremen.
eh Among the birds so collected and transmitted was the present new and very beautiful Pomatorhinus, the
discovery of which has both surprised and gratified me: to me, indeed, as the author of the « Birds of
) Australia,” it is of especial interest ; and not the less so from the singular circumstance that it should have
escaped the researches of Sir George rey, Captain Sturt, and every other person who has attended to
ornithological science since the establishment of the colony ; a very fine species it certainly is, and so pre-
cisely does it accord in form with the other Australian members of the genus, that, had it been shown me
without its habitat being mentioned, I should undoubtedly have named Australia as the country to which it
Ry belonged. Dr. Hartlaub of Bremen, to whom among many other favours I am indebted for the loan of the
a specimen from which my figure is taken, has given a description of this species, and assigned it the specific
appellation of ruficeps in the first volume of Cabanis’ “Journal ftir Ornithologie” above quoted, with the

following remarks, which I beg to transcribe :—

“Of this fine and_ typical species the Bremen Collection received two examples, scarcely differing in
colour, in a collection of South Australian birds sent from Adelaide. It is remarkable that the bird escaped
the researches of Mr. Gould and his collectors, and one cannot help imagining that it must have recently
arrived from some part of the interior of the country, and accompanied other stragglers towards the coast.

“In size and colour P. ruficeps is more nearly allied to P. superciliosus than to any other, but it differs
from that species in the brown-red colour of the head, in the white bars on the wings, and in the black mark
which separates the reddish-brown of the flanks from the white of the breast. In our two specimens the
sexes have not been ascertained ; one of them is rather less brilliantly coloured than the other.”

Crown of the head and nape chestnut- or brown-red, bounded below by a conspicuous line of white ; lores
blackish-brown ; behind the eye and ear-coverts brown; upper part of the back and wing-coverts grey, each
feather with a dark brown centre, giving those parts a mottled appearance ; lower part of the back and
rump pure dark grey; greater and lesser wing-coverts and secondaries tipped with white; throat, breast
and centre of the abdomen white; flanks reddish-brown, separated from the white of the abdomen by a
stripe of black ; under tail-coverts brown, spotted with greyish-white ; four central tailfeatheys dark oa
indistinctly rayed with black; the three outer feathers on each side brown, largely tipped with pure white ;

bill and feet blackish horn-colour, the base of the mandibles lighter.

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The figures are of the size of life.

TO RNAI DRA TT NY | ESO ry as sey