612 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol, Xll. 



Mr. F. Finn, who has kindly given me carte hlanclie to use his notes, 

 thus sums up the records of its appearance in India : — 



" It was apj^arently obtained in Bengal in 1825, and Blyth, certainly, 

 got one female in the Calcutta bazaar in 1842 or 1843, but did not 

 identify it, which is not surprising, seeing that it had not been recog- 

 nized as a species. Then at the end of February, 1896, I got eleven 

 full-plumaged birds, and since then the species has come in greater or 

 less numbers every cold weather. I have got three males and a female 

 this month (the former from a dealer), and saw what was either a small 

 dull female or a hybrid with the common white-eye about the middle 

 of January. We have other birds in plumage intermediate between 

 |;he White-eyes, and I, therefore, now think that they interbreed." 



It seems probable from Mr. Finn's observations in Calcutta that the 

 Eastern White-eye will prove to be a regular and not uncommon 

 visitor to the north-eastern parts of India and, almost equally surely, 

 to Northern Burma. My own collectors on two occasions obtained a 

 young male in Cachar ; they seemed to know the bird, and called it the 

 " boro lalbigra " or " Larger White-eye." When questioned, they said 

 it was a rare, but regular, visitor to Cachar and a more common one 

 in Sylhet, whence they offered to procure me specimens.* 

 . Again, indenting on Finn, I quote from the Asian: — "No one seems to 

 have had much opportunity of observing this duck in a wild state, and my 

 own observations have been restricted to captives. It is a better walker 

 than most Pochards, and I have fancied, hardly so fine a diver. It certain- 

 ly, judging from the birds in the fine water-aviary in the Alipore Zoologi- 

 cal Gardens, rises more easily on the wing, and flies with less effort than 

 other Pochards. I notice that at Alipore our birds can rise well up into the 

 roof, and fly round and round like the surface-feeding ducks. The species 

 appear to stand the heat less well than the Common White-eye, and pro- 

 bably breeds in a higher latitude. I am ashamed to say that, having had 

 more to do with this species than any one, I do not know how it tastes.' 



I ate part of the flesh of one of my birds, and it was not at all good, 

 not good enough to finish even. 



* Mr. Finn does not think that Baer's Pochard has been a common form, merely over' 

 looked. Certainly, as he says to me in epistola, Baer's Pochard when adult cannot well be 

 mistaken for the Common White-eye. Blyth's bird was a young female and therefore 

 of course, very much like a Common White-eye. It may be therefore that there is just a 

 temporary, unaccountable rush of this species to India, and that it will again cease. 



