660 Messrs. Ilobinson and Kloss on Birds from the 



hoped that a projected expedition to the hills of Lakon will 

 shortly explore the only promising district on the map of the 

 peninsula which is still a terra incognita to the ornithologist. 



Though, as mentioned above, the northern Malay Peninsula 

 is but slightly represented in ornithological literature, collec- 

 tions of very considerable magnitude have been made within 

 its limits ; but, with one exception, no connected account of 

 any of them has as yet appeared. It was not therefore to be 

 expected that any actual novelties would be procured, and, 

 as a matter of fact, the only new form described by us is 

 a species of Myiophoneus, somewhat closely allied to those 

 occurring both to the north and south of it. 



The earliest specimens obtained from this area are probably 

 those of Cantor, which passed with the collections of the 

 Indian Museum to the Natural History Museum at South 

 Kensington. In the middle of the last century, however, 

 before the importance of locality was recognised, Cantor, like 

 other naturalists, paid but little attention to the exact places 

 of origin of his specimens, and as a result many of his 

 acquisitions, now assigned to " Penang," where he was sta- 

 tioned, were certainly not obtained on that island, but were 

 probably derived from native correspondents or hunters who 

 secured them in the adjacent native states of Perlis and 

 Kedah. 



About 1876 Allan Hume turned his attention to the Malay 

 Peninsula, and in the course of the succeeding five years 

 accumulated an enormous mass of material throughout the 

 entire length of the western Malay Peninsula, from the 

 Tenasserim border to Singapore. The work was carried out 

 by Davison and Darling, assisted by a considerable staff of 

 natives, and so thoroughly did they accomplish it that to 

 this day hardly a single species has been secured within the 

 area covered by them which they had not also obtained. 

 In their day the Pax Britannica was hardly an accomplished 

 fact in the Peninsula, and they were therefore unable to 

 penetrate into the more inland districts or to the mountains 

 of the interior, whereas these localities have yielded a con- 

 siderable crop of novelties to later explorers, of whom 



