On a chestnut- and black weaver finch from Sumatra

While occupied with a revision of the genus Munia in the Leyden Museum, I met with two specimens of blackheaded chestnut-brown specimens from Sumatra. One of them is said to be a male, the other a female, and both are making the impression of adult birds. Both specimens, as far as I am aware the first ones of this group ever recorded from Sumatra, are the representatives of Munia atricapilla (Vieill.) from the Indian Continent and Malacca but may be easily distinguished from the latter and also from the Bornean birds by the abdomen, vent and under tail-coverts being maroon-brown instead of black. In the female some of the feathers on these parts are tipped with sooty brown. Another distinguishing character is the strawyellow tinge of the central pair of tail-feathers and the tips of the longest upper tail-coverts. Besides these two specimens our collections contain another brown-bellied specimen from Canton (China) which only differs from those from Sumatra in having no straw-yellow on the tail. This specimen showing evident marks of its having been kept in captivity, it is not out of doubt whether it is of real Chinese origin or not. It would be worth the trouble to make out with the aid of numerous specimens, if in the Sumatran representatives of this group this peculiar character is constant, as in this case they would belong to Edwards’ „Chinese sparrow” = Amadina sinensis Gray (see Sharpe, Cat. B. Br. Mus. XIII, p. 334, footnote).