428 



Rev. H. B. Tristram oa the 



mark. At first sight it reminded me much of a Plover in the 

 manner in which it rose and scudded away. Indeed there is 

 nothing of the Lark in its flight, except in early morning, when 

 I have watched it rise perpendicularly to some elevation and 

 then suddenly drop, repeating these gambols uninterruptedly 

 over exactly the same spot for nearly an hour, accompanying 

 itself by a loud whistling song. It runs with great rapidity, 

 and it requires no little speed of foot to capture a broken- 

 winged victim. In the stomach of those I opened I found 

 small coleoptera, sand-flies, and hard seeds. There is something 

 very graceful in all its movements, and the distinct markings of 

 its wings and the expansion of its long black tail render it 

 really a beautiful bird when flying. 



The egg is very large, 12 lines by 8 ; the ground-colour like 

 that of C duponti, but the brown blotches smaller and far more 

 closely distributed, especially towards the broader end. It 

 would not be easy to select it out of a series of some varieties 

 of Lanius excubitor. 



88. Certhilauda salvini, Tristram, Ibis, vol. i. p. 57. 

 (Salvin's Lark.) 



I have ventured to describe 

 this bird as a species, and to 

 name it after my friend Osbert 

 Salvin, one of the most zeal- 

 ous of our young ornitholo- 

 gists, and the most amiable 

 of travelling companions, 

 though I am aware that it 

 may be termed a local race 

 more properly than a species. 

 Its length is 7*8 inches, the 

 wing 4*5, tail 3"1, tarsi 1*3, 



being about 1'5 inch shorter than C. desertorum. I found I 

 could always distinguish the species on the wing by the broader 

 white on the secondaries. It is also a much more slender bird, 

 and the difi'ei'ence in the size of the skeleton is far greater than 

 would have been imagined from the appearance of the skins in a 

 cabinet. 



