Letters, Announcements , ^c. 471 



Mr. Blyth has been good enough to communicate to us the 

 following extract from a letter received by him from Allan 

 Hume, Esq., C.B., dated " Bareilly, May Hth, I8G7 :"— 



" I have just received a copy of ' The Ibis ' for January 1867 ; 

 and two points in your notes on Dr. Jerdon^s work drew my 

 attention. 



"1. As to the nidification of Phyllopneuste rama {supra, 

 p. 24), Jerdon is 7iot right. This very year, on the 1st of 

 April, at Etawah, my friend Mr. H. E. Brookes (well known 

 to both Messrs. Hancock and Tristram as an ardent orni- 

 thologist) shot the male on the nest ; and I saw the bird, nest, 

 and eggs within an hour, and visited the spot later. The nest 

 was placed in a low thorny bush about a foot from the ground, 

 on the side of a sloping bank in one of the large dry ravines 

 that in the Etawah district fringe the river Jumna for a breadth 

 of from one to four miles. The nest was nearly egg-shaped, 

 with a circular entrance near the top. It was loosely woven 

 with coarse and fine grass, and a little of the fibre of the 

 " Sun^^ {Crotalaria juncea) , and very neatly felted on the whole 

 interior surface of the lower two-thirds with a compact coating 

 of the down of flowering grasses, and little bits of spiders' web. 

 It was already about five inches in its longest, and three inches 

 and a half in its shortest diameter. It contained three fresh 

 eggs, which were white, very thickly speckled with brownish- 

 pink, in places confluent and having a decided tendency to 

 form a zone near the large end. Three or four days later we 

 shot the female at the same spot. 



"2. Melanoconjpha torquata {supra, p. 49). I have gene- 

 rally shot this Lark on the upper part of the Ganges and 

 Jumna Duab; and this year Mr. Brooks and myself shot several 

 at Etawah (halfway between Cawnpore and Agra). I agree 

 with you that the Indian bird is certainly not Alauda bimaculata ; 

 but 1 think that this latter is larger and clearly distinct from 

 Calundrella brachydactyla, and I do not think that M. torquata 

 is so much smaller than M. calandra. However, of the latter 

 I have no specimens, and I therefore subjoin measurements of 

 M. torquata taken in the flesh, maxima and minima of some 

 eight specimens. Length 7" to 7i". Expanse 14" to 15". 



