234: BRITISH BIRDS. 
may be conspecific. The most distinct of these is Anthus rufulus, a small 
race, which appears to be confined to India, Burma, Siam, the Malay 
peninsula, Sumatra, and possibly some of the other islands of the Malay 
archipelago. It is not known that this form differs from its near ally in 
any particular except in size. It varies in length of wing from 3 to 34 
inches, whilst that of Richard’s Pipit varies from 33 to 4 inches. Inter- 
mediate forms, however, occasionally occur both in India and in China, 
which vary in length of wing from 8} to 34 inches. In the latter country 
they have been named A. chinensis. Another species which has been still 
more confused with Richard’s Pipit is not quite so nearly allied. A. 
striolatus * has almost the same geographical distribution, breeding in 
Dauria and Eastern and Western Turkestan, and wintering in India, British 
Burma, Ceylon, and the Andaman Islands. This species differs in being 
on an average slightly smaller than A. 7ichardi, and varies in length of wing 
from 3} to 3$ mches. It has also a relatively shorter tarsus, which varies 
in A. striolatus from ‘95 to 1:1 inch, and in A. richardi from 1:1 to 1°3 inch. 
The hind claw of A. striolatus varies from ‘42 to ‘6 inch in length, whilst 
that of A. richardi varies from °6 to 75 ich. The amount of white on 
the penultimate tail-feather is generally less than an inch in A. striolatus, 
and from an inch and a half to two inches in A. richardi; but exceptions 
to this rule often occur. The other characters are scarcely more constant, 
and it is often impossible to say to which species some examples ought to 
be referred. A. striolatus is represented in South Africa by A caffer, a 
species so closely allied to it that I am unable to find the slightest difference 
between them. 
Richard’s Pipit is essentially a steppe bird, like the Tawny Pipit, but, 
unlike that species, it neglects the dry and sterile plains and chooses only 
those which are well watered. It delights in wet pastures and rich 
meadows left for hay in northern climates, where the harvest is late and 
it can build its nest in the long grass, and rear its young before the mowers 
come to disturb it, and where it can find abundance of food on the short 
grass after the hay is cleared away, just when its young are most voracious. 
These conditions it finds to perfection in the flat meadows that stretch 
away, often for miles, on the banks of the great rivers of Central Siberia, 
and which are overflowed for some days when summer suddenly comes, 
and the snow melts, and the ice on the river breaks up. I found Richard’s 
Pipit extremely abundant in the meadows on the banks of the Yenesay, 
near Yenesaisk. ‘The country is almost a dead flat for miles, and is inter- 
sected with half dried-up river-beds and chains of swampy lakes, full of tall 
sedges and reeds and water-plants of various kinds, and half concealed by 
willow bushes and alders, whilst far away in the distance the horizon is 
* This species is the A. godlewskii of Taczanowsky and Severtzow, also probably the 
A. campestris of Prjevalsky, and possibly the A. campestris of Finsch. 
