NOVITATKS ZOOLOGICAK XXXIII. 1926. 55 ANSWER TO THE "REMARKS ON 'REVIEW OF THE GENUS CACOMANTIS ' " By ERNST HARTERT WITH regard to Mr. Mathew's remarks on my criticisms I have the following to say : It was of course a silly mistake to enumerate pyrrophanus as a subspecies of cineraceus, as pyrrhophanus was the older name ! What I said on p. 172 about Mathews using rubricatus as the specific name of what I called Cacomantis cineraceus was of course perfectly correct. I referred to and quoted B. of Australia vii, 1918, but overlooked that four years later, B. of Australia ix, 1922, he had corrected and altered the name, and I also over-looked that he had called attention to the existence of Lichtenstein's name Cuculus prionurus of 1823, in the following words : " List p. 155, and Check List p. 103. Add to synonymy : Cuculus prionurus Lichtenstein, Verzeichn. Doubl. Mus. Berlin, p. 9 (pref. Sept.) 1823 : New South Wales." But this was done in August 1921, about three years after the publication of the volume on the Cuculidae of the Birds of Australia ! I will of course not make excuses for overlooking his statement, but I might be allowed to say that it is a hard task to look up in such cases several lists in order to find out what genus and species is referred to. It would have been much easier for ornithologists who have to do with the nomenclature of Australian Birds, if Mathews had said : " Cacomantis rubricatus : To the synonymy must be added : Cuculus prionurus, etc., etc." I have since seen the type of Cuculus prionurus in the Berlin Museum, and there is no doubt that it is the bird which for many years was erroneously called G. flabelliformis, and in 1912 by Mathews C. rubricatus. As prionurus is earlier than cineraceus, I must of course adopt it, and the species I called C. cineraceus in Nov. Zool. 1925. pp. 172-4 will be : Cacomantis prionurus (Licht.) Mr. Mathews disagrees with me in adopting the name pyrrhophanus of Vieillot, 1817, for the New Caledonian subspecies, but I cannot approve of his reasons. As to the description, Vieillot says : " II a toutes les parties inferieures rousses." This clearly means that the whole underside is rufous, and I do not agree that we should take it for a bird which has the throat ashy grey. Mathews argues that the underside in this case does not include the throat, because Vieillot says afterwards that the head is grey, and that the head includes the throat as well. This of course might have been argued, but I had good reason to take my point of view, as the description agreed with the type, and moreover, it seems to be obvious that Vieillot first described the underside, and then the upperside, the " head " meaning the head from above. In fact, in the very next description on the same page he said, in describing Cuculus solitarius, that the head is greyish
BioStor
