Ornithological Notes. 385 



tlieir powerful bias impels them to confound things which 

 differ. Species are not species with them, but evolved forms, 

 and so it must be till they die ; but it is not necessary that 

 every one should follow their line of thought, which is most 

 decidedly inconvenient in natural history. A man labours 

 hard to discriminate a species, and the evolutionists would 

 abolish it in a moment if they could. Fortunately they 

 have never yet brought forward anything in the way of 

 proof ■^. 



A subject to which I should like once more to refer, if not 

 out of place here, is the question. What is Milvus govinda of 

 Sykes ? 



Lately, Mr. Gurney was kind enough to send me his ' List 

 of the Diurnal Birds of Prey in the Norwich Museum,^ in 

 which he says, in a footnote (p. 80) : — " Mr. Brooks here 

 repeats the reasons which he had previously given in ' Stray 

 Feathers,'' vol. iv. p. 272, for considering that ' Milvus 

 govinda ' of Sykes was intended by him as a designation of 

 the larger migratory Indian Kite for which I have used the 

 specific name of ' melanotis;' but the habits of ' M. govinda,' 

 as described by Sykes, are not those of this species, but of 

 the smaller Indian Kites, which are non-migratory.^^ 



This note of Mr. Gurney^s will not settle the question 

 against me. I have closely observed the habits of M. affinis, 

 (Bgyptius, and govinda, and they are perfectly identical, as 

 far as bold impudence is concerned. At Assensole both the 

 large and the lesser Indian Kites were very common, and no 

 one could distinguish them by tlieir habits, so, with all 

 deference to Mr. Gurney, Sykes's description of the habits 

 will most perfectly fit the large Kite. We have one of 

 Sykes^s types, a large Kite of the species which Mr. Gurney 

 calls M. melanotis ; and, again, we have his description ap- 

 plicable only to the large bird, for the dimensions are those 

 of the large bird. The accident of the small bird being in 

 the same case does not invalidate the description, or render 

 it inapplicable to the bird it clearly fits. Sykes did not know 



* [It is almost needless to say that we are not responsible for our 

 correspondent's opinions. — Edd.] 



