THE ZOOLOGY OF BRITISH INDIA. IGl 



of Gray and Horsfield, in defence of this most unnatural combination 

 but we regret that he should be able to adduce the respectable 

 authority of Van Der Hoeven on the same side. When will our orni- 

 thologists begin to trouble themselves to study internal characters as 

 well as external ? A very slight acquaintance with the anatomy and 

 osteology of the two groups in question serves to settle this (amongst 

 ornithologists) much disputed point. Indeed, it is not necessary 

 for them, in the present instance, to examine anything more than 

 the feathers of one of their much-loved skins. Already, thirty years 

 ago, Mtzsch had shown that the Swallows and Swifts are as distinct 

 in pterylographic characters as in every other essential point of 

 structure. 



The Swallows are represented in India by some twelve or thirteen 

 sj)ecies, our familiar Swallow of this country {Hirundo rustica) 

 standing at the head of the list, and the common Sand Martin and 

 House Martin being also included in it. The Swifts of India Belong 

 to four well-marked types of structure, including, besides our two 

 well-known European species, representatives of the Tree Shifts 

 (Den drochelidon), the Spine- tailed Swifts (Acanthylis) jSmd. the genus 

 Collocalia, so celebrated as containing the birds which form edible 

 nests from the inspissated product of their highly developed salivary 

 glands. One widely distributed member of the last-named group is 

 found in several parts of our Indian dominions, and about a hundred 

 weight of its much -prized nests is stated to be taken annually from 

 its breeding places on the Malabar coast. 



The next family treated of by Dr. Jerdon is the Groat-suckers, or 

 Kight-jars (Caprimulgidse) — represented in Europe by two species 

 only, but in India by not less than ten species, belonging to several 

 different genera, all of strictly insectivorous habits, and destined in 

 this, as in other tropical climates, to keep in check the superabun- 

 dance of insect-life. The Trogonidae, which now follow, are a still 

 more strictly tropical group, being exclusively confined to the hot 

 countries of Asia, Africa, and America. In the Indian peninsula 

 they are represented only by two species of Harpactes — a genus 

 apparently exclusively insectivorous, although the more typical 

 American members of the group feed, it is believed, nearly alto- 

 gether on fruit. In the Bee-eaters and Eollers (Meropidae and 

 Coraciidse), which now succeed, we meet with two allied families of 

 insect-eating birds, peculiar to the Old World — and represented 

 but feebly in Europe, but each of them containing several species 



