326 Mr. J. D. de La Touche on 



necessary to stay altogether in the mountains. For this the 

 goodwill and assistance of the savages is indispensable^ and the 

 collector would probably have to leave his Chinese assistant 

 or servant behind and live in the savages' villages. 



November I8th. Fine, cooler. The chair-bearers and car- 

 riers were punctual, and we left at 6 a.m. I walked to the 

 first river. Amongst other birds I saw a good many Golden 

 VloYers (Char adrimfulvus) and several Snipes. A few Striped 

 Harriers {Circus spilonot us) were quartering the rice-fields, 

 and I saw two other Harriers, which I took to be C. (sru- 

 ginosus, but they had apparently pure white heads and 

 shoulders. On looking over the descriptions I have of this 

 species, I find no mention of the white shoulder, nor do I 

 remember this feature in the many Marsh- Harriers which I 

 collected in China, so I came to the conclusion that these 

 birds were of some species unknown to me. \_" The Marsh- 

 Harrier has not unfrequently, in imperfectly adult plumage, 

 a patch of the same yellowish white on the ' shoulder ' as on 

 the crown, which seems to point to Mr. de La Touche' s first 

 idea as correct." — H. H. S.] 



Nothing of interest was observed during the rest of the 

 return journey, except a pair of Crested Mynahs, perched, 

 in company with a crowd of Black Drongos, on some high 

 bamboos. I remained several days at Takow before return- 

 ing to Amoy, but did little in the way of bird-collecting ; 

 the neighbourhood has been so thoroughly worked by Swinhoe 

 that nothing remains to be done. On one day I went with 

 Frere Giner to visit a lake and some marshes where Ducks 

 were said to be plentiful. At a narrow sedgy marsh, some 

 two miles from Chimkim, we found many Snipes. Leaving 

 this, we made our way across paddy-fields to a low range of 

 hills, called the Pineapple Hills, N.E. of Takow. We saw 

 on the plain Circus spilonotus, Cisticola sp. inc., many Golden 

 Plovers, Anthus cervinus, Motacilla taivana, Buchanga atra, 

 &c. The lake is surrounded by low hills, a belt of high 

 bamboos on its northern shore, on the S. a village, with fine 

 banyans overshadowing the water. A large flock of ducks 

 {Fuligula cristata ?) were resting on the water. They were 



