688 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XV III. 



The bird is by no means rare and both varieties or species, as the case may 

 be, breed in the Himalayas from 6 to 9,000 feet altitude and almost invariably 

 on a deodar tree, so if any sportsmen coming across a pair would take note of 

 the colouration of both parent birds and the youngster, if any, and report 

 their experience in the Journal, we should soon be able to judge whether we 

 have been dealing with 2 phases of the same species or whether each constitutes 

 a species in itself. 



Buteo ferox (The Long-legged Buzzard") is another species that might be 



watched, as I have noticed, that only the light variety is a visitor to the plains 



during the winter and very common everywhere, but I never remember seeing 



the dark form actually on the plains, though I have occasionally met it along 



the lower hills, yet in the spring and autumn both are very common at about 



5,000 feet. I have never found their nest however, though I have seen and 



shot young birds in both light and dark plumages. 



C. H. DONALD, f.z.s. 

 Bushahi State, 



Simla District, 20lh April 1908. 



No. XXIIL— ABNORMAL TAIL IN A LIZARD HEMIDACTYLUS 



GLEADOVII. 



I send a specimen of the lizard Hemidactylus gleadovii with a trifid tail. — 



The occurrence of a bifid tail 

 in this species and bifid and 

 trifid tails in other lizards has 

 been observed on in Vol. ix, 

 p. 30 and Vol. xi, p. 680 of 

 our Journal. The specimen 

 sent was caught on the wall 

 of the dak bungalow here. 

 It appeared to be inconve- 

 nienced by its complicated 

 tail and moved sluggishly and 

 was easily caught. As the 

 tail has been somewhat bent 

 by packing I may add that 

 in life it had the appearance 

 of a normal straight tail with 

 two supplementary tails at- 

 tached on the left hand side 

 of the lizards main tail. 



From an examination of 

 the scaling, however, it would 

 appear uliat the main axis of the original tail has been bent to the left from 

 the second projection, and the first projection and the portion which now 



