654 Short Notes. [Ibis,

What is Curruoa aff inis Blyth? For some time we have suspected that Curruca afinis Blyth

is applied to the wrong bird and that consequently the name Sylvia curmca affnis has been, and is, incorrectly used for the Indian Lesser Whitethroat. All authors are in agreement that the Indian Lesser Whitethroat only differs from the European bird in the wing-formula. Let us see what Blyth said.

Blyth gave the name Curruca affnis in a footnote on p. 564 of the ' Journal of the Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' xiv. 1845, and he says that " the Curruca sylviella (v. garrula), so called, of S. India is conspicuously a larger bird than its European relative, having the wing fully two inches and three-quarters long, and the rest in proportion : the general tone of colour is also somewhat darker, and the bill and legs are proportionally larger and stronger, the tame measuring from thirteen- sixteenths to seven-eighths of an inch. As for the roseate tinge on the underparts mentioned by Sykes, this is common to finc specimens from either country. I certainly consider the Indian bird to be distinct, and shall therefore name it C'. afinis. "

No one who reads this origiiial description and who knows the group of Lesser Whitethroats (Sylvia curruca) at all well can suppose that it applies to the bird which almost universally has bccn called Sylvia curruca afinis. The bird which has lieen called affnis is not conspicuously larger than S. c . curruca ; its wing measures 61.5-66*5 mm. (that is, never so much as two and three-quarter inches=70 mm.) ; the general tone of colour is, a t all events, never darker than the European bird's ; the bill and legs are not proportionally larger and stronger, thc tarsi measuring 18-20 mm. (i. e . , less than thirteen- sixteenths of an inch), while the bill is of the same size as in the European bird.

Blyth was perfectly cognizant of two Lesser Whitethroats in India (apart from minula), for in ' The Ibis ' (1873, p. 80) he writes :-" Mr. W. E. Brooks is of opinion that Sylvia curruca should be expunged from the list of Indian birds, as hc supposes that the larger S . afinis, nobis, has been mistaken for it. Several specimens, however, obtained by

1933.1 Short Notes. 565

myself above the tideway of the River Hugli were indis- tinguishable from British examples, and I have only seen S. afinis from Upper and Southern India. The two only differ in size. . . . ) )

Blyth’s description of afinis corresponds exactly in every particular with the bird which Hume (‘ Stray Feathers,’ vol. vii. p. 60, 1878) described as althcea, and there can be no doubt that the two names apply to the same bird. I n confirmation of this it is of interest to note that Jerdon, who supplied Blyth with his types of afinis, did not fall into any error (‘ Birds of India,’ vol. ii. pp. 209-210, 1863), since here his Sylvia a&is is the larger and rarer bird and his Sylvia curruca is the smaller one “found over the greater part of India ’’ (i. e., S. afinis auct.). Nor was Hume mis- taken (‘ Stray Feathers,’ i. p. 197) in 1873 when he distin- guished the three Lesser Whitethroats then recognized, and said the largest race, with wing 2.65-2.75 in., bill -45 in., corresponded well with Blyth’s affinis.

It is of interest, then, to see how and when the change (and error) took place.

In 1874 Brooks (‘ Stray Feathers,’ ii. p. 332) refers to afinis as the larger bird, but says that there is so much intergradation between afinis of India and garrula of England (=currucu) that he cannot recognize a@& as more than an occasional variety. He says that he has examined the types of afinis which Jerdon sent to Blyth, and that they “ accord well with my Nort,h-West Indian birds ” ; this does not,, of course, fix what the types of afJinis were, since Brooks’s birds included, no doubt, both afinis auct. and althcea.

I n 1875 Brooks (‘Stray Feathers,’ iii. p. 272) went back on what he had written the previous year, as he had since discovered that Indian birds (i. e., afinis auct. and althcea) have a different wing-formula to British ones, but his affinis, which he now recognized, still included althcea, and, indeed, most of the distinctions as opposed to curruca which he gives, such as larger bill and nesting-site, refer to althcea.

I n 1878 Hume (‘Stray Feathers,’ vii. p. 59) started the error, which has been copied ever since, in assigning afinis to the bird which has been known by that name to the present

656 Obituary. [Ibis,

day. Hume quite correctly describes the three then-known Lesser Whitethroats of India-the smallest, palest, desert- haunting form as minula, an intermediate form, which, he says, Brooks had decided was Blyth’s a@&, and the largest and darkest, which he names althEa. But, as we have shown above, Brooks did not decide that Blyth’s types were the intermediate bird, but that they accorded merely with Brooks’s birds (which were afinis auct. and althma), and were distinct on wing-formula from curruca of Europe.

The types (two) of afinis Blyth were still in 1892 in the Calcutta Museum, but a recent request for their production elicited the information that they cannot now be found, It is of interest, however, to note that Jerdon sent these to Blyth from South India, no doubt from the Madras Presidency, and the only specimens of Jerdon’s from Madras in the British Museum are of the bird called althma.

It is quite clear then that Sylvia althma of Hume is the same bird as Sylvia afinis of Blyth. Fortunately no exchange of name will be required, as Sylvia afinis Blyth is preoccupied by Sylvia afinis Hardy (Ann. de l’dssoc. Norm. lW), so that the largc bird which breeds in Kashmir will still be Sylvia althma, while the bird described under no. 888, p. 589, of Hartert’s ‘Vijg. pal. Faun.’ is without a name, and so we propose for it that of

Sylvia eurruea blythi, nom. nov., and fix the type as $, Cawnpore, 17 Jan. 1876, Brooks Coll. In Brit. Mus. Reg. no. 9 8 . 9 . 1 . 1 0 1 . - - C ~ ~ ~ ~ B. TICEHURST and HUGH WHISTLER.

XXXV1.-Obituary .

JULIAN GEORGE TUCK. THOUGII not a member of our Union, the death of the Kev. Julian George Tuck, a t the age of 81, on 12 May, 1933, must not pass unnoticed. Julian Tuck, who was for forty-six years Rector of Tostock, near Bury St. Edmunds, where his father was Rector before him, was a well-known authority on East Anglian natural history. All his life he was a keen