HOUSE-MARTIN. M2) 
as he failed to detect any difference from our bird in some examples in the 
museum at Omsk. 
The House-Martin has no ally so near as to make it probable that it 
interbreeds with any other species; but in Eastern Siberia it is replaced 
by Pallas’s Martin, H. lagopoda, which has frequently been mistaken for 
it. This is a well-defined species, with a shorter and squarer tail than our 
bird: it also differs in having the longest upper tail-coverts white instead 
of black, and the axillaries and under wing-coverts dark brown instead of 
very light brown. I found it extremely common in the valley of the 
Yenesay, swarming in thousands on the Arctic circle, and breeding as far 
north as lat. 69°. It probably breeds throughout Eastern Siberia, as 
Middendorff observed it in the Stanovoi Mountains, and Pallas records it 
from Kamtschatka. It breeds throughout South-eastern Siberia, and is 
probably the species found in such numbers by Prijevalsky in Mongolia. 
Severtzow records it as passing through Turkestan on migration; but it 
breeds in- North China, and probably winters in the Burma peninsula, 
where it has been mistaken for the European species *. 
Between these species two intermediate species occur, doubtfully distinct 
from each other, but both of them distinct both from the House-Martin and 
Pallas’s Martin. The larger of the two, H. dasypus, with a wing exceed- 
ing four inches in length, breeds in Japan and winters in Borneo; the 
smaller one, H. cashmiriensis, with a wing less than four inches, appears 
to be confined to the Himalayas, breeding in the higher valleys and 
wintering in the lower ones. Both these forms have the short, slightly 
forked tail of the eastern Martin, and the black upper tail-coverts of the 
western species. The only other Swallow with feathered tarsi and feet 
is the Himalayan Martin, H. nipalensis, a much smaller bird, which may 
at once be distinguished by its black under tail-coverts. Our knowledge 
of the geographical distribution of this section of the genus Hirundo is in 
great confusion, owing to the carelessness of collectors, who in too many 
instances have not thought it worth their while to shoot such a commen 
bird, taking it for granted that no mistake could possibly arise in the iden- 
tification of so well known a species as the House-Martin. 
The House-Martin is a spring migrant to our islands, and reaches us 
about a week after the Swallow has announced the coming of summer. In 
the south of England it usually arrives about the middle of April; but in 
cold and backward seasons it sometimes does not appear until the end of 
that month. In Greece and Asia Minor, Dr. Kriiper informed me that it 
arrived regularly during the first week in March; whilst in the north of 
* In Colonel Tickell’s manuscript Illustrations of Indian Ornithology, presented by him 
to the Zoological Society of London, the figure and description of the example of Chelidon 
urbica obtained in Tenasserim unquestionably refer to Pallas’s House-Martin. The upper 
tail-coverts are not only described as white, but are also figured so. 
N2 
