PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 108 Washington : 1958 No. 3397 THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF THE BIRD GENUS APALOPTERON By H. G. Deignan The OrniMiological Society of Japan's (1942) list of Japanese birds indicates that, b}^ 1942, 100 species of birds had been reported from the Bonin Islands, an oceanic group of volcanic origin lying about 500-600 nautical miles southeast of Yokohama. Of these, only 19 species (four of them by then extinct on the islands) were known to have bred. Of the 19, eight pelagic forms (two albatrosses, four shearwaters, one gannet, and a tern) may be disregarded at this Lime. Of the land birds, seven are mere races of species common in the Japanese Archipelago (one hawk, one pigeon, one bulbul, one crow, one thrush, one warbler, and one greenfinch), while two (a pigeon and a hawfinch), extinct and not examined by me, may be presumed to have had similar origin. An anomalous element in the avifauna is found in the former presence of a night heron characteristic of the coasts and islands of the southwestern Pacific and otherwise not occurring north of the Palaus and the Philippines. Finally, there is the genus Apalo'pteron Bonaparte, the subject of these remarks. First named Ixos famuiaris bj'-its discoverer, F. H. von Kittlitz,^ and considered a bulbul, it was removed to the "Timaliidae" by ' Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, vol. 1, pt. 3, p. 235, pi. 13, 1830. 133
BioStor
