to Gould's ' Birds of Asia.' 53 



has published a work on the species inhabiting this region, 

 whichj however, from being written in Russian, will, like 

 Dr. Severtzoff' s ' Fauna of Turkestan/ be unintelligible to 

 the great majority of readers. Filippi^s ' Viaggio in Persia' 

 also contains a useful list of the birds met with by him ; but 

 by far the most important work on the zoology of Persia is 

 that of Mr. W. T. Blanford, who has given a very complete 

 account of the birds obtained by him during his travels from 

 Baluchistan through Persia to the Caspian. This work on 

 Eastern Persia also contains an account of the collections 

 made by Sir Oliver St. John during his residence near Shiraz. 

 When we come to Afghanistan we have the excellent obser- 

 vations of Captain Hutton on the Birds of Kandahar, pub- 

 lished in 1845 and 1846, and the more scattered notices of 

 the collections made by Dr. Samuel Grifiith in the same 

 country, as recorded by Messrs, Horsfieldand Moore in their 

 ' Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of the East India 

 Company.' Besides these there are some excellent papers by 

 Colonel Swinhoe, Captain Wardlaw Ramsay, and Serjeant 

 BarneSj which give an account of the birds observed by them 

 during the last Afghan war. 



As regards British India, we have already alluded to the 

 state of its ornithological record up to the year 1850, when 

 the labours of Blyth and Jerdon had done so much to pre- 

 pare the way for the successful issue which has since unin- 

 terruptedly followed. Ceylon appears to have been the next 

 place to be explored by working ornithologists ; and Mr. 

 E. L. Layard contributed in 1853 some very interesting notes 

 on the birds of that country, supplementary to the catalogue 

 published by Dr. Kelaart in his ' Prodromus Faunse Zeylo- 

 nicse,' But in the year 1854 a most important work on 

 Indian ornithology was issued, which we consider to have 

 had a great effect upon the recent studies of ornithologists. 



This was the ' Catalogue of the Birds in the Museum of 

 the East India Company,' a work which bears on its title- 

 page the names of Dr. Horsfield and Mr. F. Moore, but 

 which is known to have been prepared entirely by the last- 

 named naturalist. The importance of this Catalogue con- 



