ASARCORNIS SCUTULATA 43 



have passed through iii\- hands or have been kept by nie in captivity, 

 and my own notes include all the information given by others. 



Distribution. — This is one of our least known ducks, and records 

 of its distribution are still very limited. It is very common in 

 Eastern Assam, and extends throughout Burma, being common in 

 Aracan and less so as one proceeds southwards, though it has been 

 met with in some numbers in Tennasserim. 



As regards Jerdon's letter to Hume, in which he mentions this 

 bird as congregating in large flocks, it is a pity we have not the date 

 of it. In 1864, when he finished his third volume of ' Birds of 

 India,' he evidently looked on the bird as rare in the extreme. He 

 talks of it occurri)ig in Dacca and other parts of Eastern Bengal, but 

 does not lead one to infer that it was anything but uncommon even 

 there. If his letter was written prior to 1864, it may be taken for 

 granted that in the meanwhile Jerdon had discovered his mistake, 

 whilst if written after 1864, it shows that Jerdon made a mistake, 

 which, as far as anyone knows, has never been rectified. 



He says : — " I have seen several flocks of Casarca Jeucoptera in 

 the lower parts of the Brahmapootra, where it joins the Ganges, 

 not far from Dacca, where, indeed, Simson has seen it." 



Thirty years more added to the years v^hen Hume and his 

 collectors worked the country above referred to has shown that it 

 could not possibly have been the Wood-Duck which Jerdon saw or 

 referred to. That Simson saw it in Dacca certainly does not prove 

 that it inhabits the Megna, Brahmapootra, and Ganges in numbers, 

 and to my own knowledge there has been no record of a single 

 specimen having been seen there for over twenty years. The only 

 other notice of its occurrence that I know of in Eastern Bengal is 

 of four birds, said to have been seen in Singijhoom by Mr. W. 

 Moylan, when out shooting with two other guns ; of which four birds, 

 one ia drake) was shot. 



Colonel Graham seems to have found it common m the 

 Lakhimpur district of Assam, where, however, it appears that he 

 only got one bird from Sadiya, and he notes it as rare in Darrang. 

 Godwin Austen procured one on the river Dunsiri, saw one in the 

 Garo Hills, and knew of one killed in Tezpur. Two were seen by 



