East-Asiatic Shore-Lark. 185 



portions of the articles on the Shore-Larks in Dresser's 

 ' Birds of Europe ' referring to the species the name of 

 which heads the present article. To this the same author 

 has added an appropriate climax in his letter on the subject 

 (Ibis, 1884-, p. 116). As an example of order, I venture to 

 refer to the synonymy and geographical distribution copied 

 at the head of this article from my ' History of British Birds/ 

 ii. p. 286*. I must do Mr. Dresser the justice to say that 

 in the letter already mentioned he admits his error (long ago 

 pointed out by Blanford and Scully) in uniting 0. longiros- 

 tris with 0. penicillata ; but in doing so he appears to imply 

 that the rest of his work was free from important blunders, 

 and does not deserve the mild censure which I applied to it. 

 He has apparently forgotten that in the 'Birds of Europe' 

 (iv. p. 398) he says that 0. penicillata ''^ extends east- 

 wards into North China,'' and contradicts himself on page 

 397, where he says that an example in the Swinhue collec- 

 tion from Tientsin is a long-billed form of 0. brandti, a 

 statement which is quite correct. But on page 392 he had re- 

 ferred the very same skin to O. alpestris. Which of the three 

 species does he really think it belongs to ? His treatment 

 of O. elwesi is equally capricious. On page 395 he identifies 

 it with 0. penicillata ; but on page 401 he refers it to 0. al- 

 pestris. Unfortunately both these identifications are wrong. 

 O. elwesi is unquestionably a somewhat small form of 0. lon- 

 girostris. Of his blunder respecting the latter species little 

 need be said, as he has recanted it ; but his statement on 

 page 401 that the series of Shore-Larks in the Gould col- 

 lection from Kulu (one of which is the type of O. longirostris) 

 all show the black on the breast united Avith that on the 

 neck is utterly inexplicable. The fact is that not one of 

 them does so, as any one may now see in the British -Museum 

 collection ; neither does the example depicted in the P. Z. S. 

 by no less an artist than Wolf. We now come to the 

 most ''egregious blunder" of all. On page 397 Dresser 



* I have added to the synonymy the catalogue of Swiuhoe's and Dres- 

 ser's blunders, which I purposely omitted in my book, not wishing to call 

 special attention to their number and importance. 



