Notes on the London Zoological Society's Indian Collection 187


causing a nasty wound on the back of the hand of one of the keepers.

Only by holding an inverted frying-pan with a long handle (made for

watering the tigers) over the hand of the keeper when he was taking out

or replacing the seed- and water-tins could the savage attacks of the

Crane’s spear-like bills be warded off. The Peafowl, Cranes, Partridges,

and Quails had an almost daily ration of chopped onions, in addition to

their staple diet of grain. The Egrets were fed twice daily upon meat

or fish in small pieces ; owing to the Egret's bullying nature—they were

all in one cage—the weaker ones had to be separated.


Perhaps the rarest bird in the collection was a single example of

the Spotted-wing ( Psaroglossa spiloptera), which has the distinction of

possessing a genus all to itself! It was about eighteen years ago that

I had the honour of presenting the London Zoo with their first Spotted-

wing. Some authors, including Jerdon, spell the generic name without

the letter p. Jerdon, who calls the bird the “ Spotted-winged

Stare”, places it between the Starlings and the Crackles, or Hill-

Mynahs ; but Oates, in his Fauna of British India (Birds), says it

£i has been universally considered a Starling, but in my opinion

erroneously so He places it near the Silver-eared Mesia, between

the Fruitsuckers ( Chloropsis) and the Bulbuls. Dr. A. G. Butler, in his

Foreign Birds for Cage and A viary (part i), considers the Spotted-wing

as more nearly related to the Bulbuls than the Starlings. In the same

book he quotes me as saying, firstly, that I “ considered its affinity

to the Starlings very doubtful ”, and, secondly, “ that it was a hopping

bird, and did not use its mandibles as dividers after the manner of

Starlings.” In spite of the Starling-like call of the Spotted-wing,

my opinion, expressed in 1902, remains unaltered. Further, Dr. Butler

states that Mr. Pycraft, after dissecting a body of the Spotted-wing,

" decided in favour of its relationship to the Bulbuls.”


One of the most valuable birds in the collection, a Temminck s

Tragopan, succumbed to the terrific heat in the Hoogly River between

Calcutta and the sea, when the steamer had to anchor, waiting for the

tide, for four hours in a dead calm.


Two rare and beautiful Yellow Parrakeets—but no specimens of the

ordinary Green Ring-necked Parrakeet—came with the collection

for our esteemed member, Mr. Alfred Ezra. Unfortunately one



