Mr. R. B. Sharpens Catalogue of Accipitres. 81 



loan of a good series of oriental Kites^ amongst -which is an 

 immature specimen from Tonghoo, the sex of which is unfor- 

 tunately not marked, but which seems to me to be a male of 

 M. melanotis ; its wing-measurement is 19'5 inches, the tarsus 

 2"2 ; and the white patch on the underside of the primaries is 

 large and conspicuous. This is the only specimen of M. me- 

 lanotis from Burmah which has come under my notice. 



With regard to the western range of M. melanotis, a sub- 

 ject which is not particularly referred to in Mr. Sharpens 

 volume, Dr. Finsch has recently recorded its presence, about 

 the beginning of June, at the lakes Nor-Saissan and Marka- 

 kul, near the north-western frontier of the Chinese Empire^". 

 Colonel Prjevalsky, speaking of M. melanotis, says that 

 " throughout Mongolia, Kan-su, and about Koko-nor it is 

 common,'' but apparently as a summer visiter only. He also 

 mentions M. govinda as a summer visitor to the Ussuri 

 country, where he states that it is then common ; but I do 

 not clearly understand whether he uses the specific name of 

 " govinda " as synonymous with '' melanotis/' or as indicative 

 of a smaller race f- 



In 'The Ibis' for 1875, at p. 104, Mr. SevertzoflF, in his 

 " Fauna of Turkestan " (as translated by Mr. Dresser), records 

 M. melanotis as breeding in localities of medium altitude 

 throughout Turkestan, but speaks of it as synonymous with 

 '' M. govinda, Sykes;" this statement must, however, be 

 taken in connexion with a passage, which seems to modify 

 it, in Mr. Severtzoff's letter to the editor of ' Stray Feathers,' 

 in which, at p. 422 of the volume for 1875, he writes, " I 

 mistook some Turkestan (Russian) Kites with blackish ear- 

 feathers for the true M. govinda ; my specimens are M. ater." 

 It is, however, certain that in Eastern Turkestan a Kite 

 occurs which is not Milvus migrans, and which, judging from 

 two Yarkand specimens in the British Museum, ought, in my 

 opinion, to be referred to M. melanotis. Mr. Scully, in his 

 very interesting " Contributions to the Ornithology of Eastern 

 Turkestan," published in ' Stray Feathers' for 1876, speaks, 



* Vide Ibis, 1877, pp. 53, 54. 



t Vide ' Ornithological Miscellany,' vol. ii. pp. 152, 153. 

 SER. IV. VOL. III. « 



