168 Mr. Blyth^s Commentanj 



struck me at once upon my return to England and again seeing 

 numbers of the latter hanging up in the poulterers^ shops. British 

 Curlews are far more uniform in size, and have the breast and 

 flanks much more conspicuously spotted, the spots being broader 

 and more developed. Both species, however, are noted by Mr. 

 Swinhoe from China, N. lineatus as a more southern bird than 

 the other*. Mr. Swinhoe (P. Z. S. 1863, pp. 317, 318) gives as 

 many as nine species of Curlew (one or two perhaps insufficiently 

 distinguished) from China, Formosa, and Japan ; and his no. 314 

 is perhaps the supposed A^. tenuirostris " stated to have been 

 met with in Burmah,'^ according to Dr. Jerdon. I have consider- 

 able doubt, however, of the latter having been other than a 

 small-sized individual of N. lineatus, a species which varies re- 

 markably in size, quite as much so as Limusa (pgocephala ; and 

 I believe that the A^. arcuatulus, Hodgson (Gray, Misc. p. 86 ; 

 B. M. Cat. Hodgson's Coll. 2nd ed. p. 137), is founded on a 

 small-sized N. Imeatus. I long habitually sought for the sup- 

 posed N. tenuirostris among the considerable numbers of N. li- 

 neatus brought to the Calcutta bazar ; and once only I obtained 

 N. phaopus, which, it may be remarked, is not the " Wood- 

 cock" of Bengal tables, as Dr. Jerdon strangely asserts (p. 685), 

 Limosa eegocephala being the species so called. 



879. Ibidorhynchus struthersi, Vigors ; Gould, B. As. 

 pt. viii, pi. 



884. Tringa damacensis, Horsf. ; T. subminuta, Middend., 

 is quite distinct from T. minuta, L., which has a broader bill 

 and shorter toes. T. albescens, Temm., has been obtained in 

 Ceylon (Ibis, 1864, p. 420) : it is identified by Prof. Schlegel 

 with T. minuta. 



886. Tringa pygm^ea is not often brought to the Calcutta 

 bazar. Amongst the great numbers of T. subarcuata it rarely 

 happens that two or three may be selected of T. cinclus or this 

 species, which is the supposed Eurhinorhynchus pygmcms of Mr. 

 Swinhoe on a former occasion (P. Z. S. 1863, p. 317), an error 

 which he afterwards corrected (P. Z. S. 1864, p. 272). 



* Pi'of. Schlegel gives N. major from Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and South 

 Africa, and N. arcuata from Nepal (!), Sumatra, and Java (Mus. P.-B. 

 Scolopaces, p. 8.9). 



