MELIDECTES EMILII, Meyer.

Count Turati’s Honey-sucker.

Melidectes torquatus (nec Scl.), Sharpe, Journ. Linn. Soe. xvi. p. 438 (1883).
Melidectes emilit, Meyer, in Madarasz’s Zeitschr. fir gesammte Ornithologie, ili. p. 22, Taf. iv. fig. 2 (1886).

 

Tue first occurrence of this speces in South-eastern New Guinea was recorded by us in 1883, when
Mr. Goldie’s collections from the Astrolabe Mountains reached England. We then compared specimens
with the plate of 17. torquatus from the Arfak Mountains, figured in the present work, and were unable to see
any differences between them ; but Dr. Meyer, who had examples before him from the Horseshoe range of
the Astrolabe Mountains, compared them with others from North-western New Guinea, and described the
southern bird as AZ, emifii, naming it after Count Emilio Turati of Milan.

We have no doubt that Dr. Meyer, having specimens from both the north-west and south-east of New
Guinea, was able to form a more correct judgment than we were, and that he was perfectly right in
separating JZ. emilii from M. torquatus, although the differences are very slight, consisting in the pale under
surface and smaller white throat-spot in the southern bird. We have lately seen several specimens from the
Astrolabe range, all of which bore out the characters assigned to JZ. emilit by Dr. Meyer, and we therefore
fully believe in the distinctness of the species. Besides the specimens obtained by Mr. Goldie in the
Morocco district, where it is called by the natives ‘Ugirru,’ it has been met with in the Horseshoe range
by Mr. Hunstein, and by Mr. H. O. Forbes in the Sogeri district.

It is from specimens obtained in the last-named locality that the figures in the Plate have been drawn.

[R. B. S.J