TREE-P[PIT. 573 



lat. 69", though Wolley many times ohtained its nest and 

 eggs near Muoniouiska. From thence southward it is diffused 

 pretty generally over Earope, but still only as a summer- 

 visitor, or a bird of double passage, and it does not even 

 winter in Sicily, though a few seem to do so in Malta. It is 

 common in North Africa, and it probably extends over the 

 whole of that continent since Prof. Sundevall records one in 

 Wahlberg's collection from Caffraria. In Asia its range is 

 likewise very great, reaching even to China and Japan, and 

 it is found all over India in the cold season*. 



The bill is dark brown above, the base of the lower man- 

 dible pale yellow-brown : the irides hazel : the top of the 

 head, the nape and back, dark brown, each feather edged 

 with light clove-brown, which is often tinged with buff ; the 

 lesser wing-coverts blackish-brown, edged and tipped with 

 dull white ; the greater wing-coverts dark brown, edged with 

 pale brown, the light-coloured ends of the two sets of coverts 

 forming as many bars across the wing ; quill-feathers dark 

 brown, the primaries and secondaries with a very narrow 

 light border of an olive-green tinge, the tertials with a 

 broad outer edge of pale broAvn ; upper tail-coverts nearly 

 uniform clove-brown ; the tail-feathers clove-brown, the outer 

 pair with nearly all the outer web, and the distal part of the 

 inner web, dull greyish-white, the second pair with a small 

 triangular patch of dull white at the end of the inner web, the 

 next three pairs with a very narrow light outer margin, and 

 the middle pair, which are barred indistinctly with a darker 

 shade, more broadly edged with light brown; the chin and 

 throat buflfy-white ; from the inferior angle of the lower 

 mandible a dark brown streak passes backwards and down- 

 wards ; the sides of the neck, and the breast pale buff, with 

 elongated spots of dark brown ; belly and lower tail-coverts 

 dull white ; the flanks tinged with buff and streaked with 



* Some of the Indian examples, when freshly moulted, are so highly coloured 

 that they were long thought to be specifically distinct, and received the name of 

 Anthus agiiis from Sykes and of A. maculatus from Mr. Hodgson. Modern 

 Indian oHiithologists have regarded them as identical with our own bird, and in 

 this view most European authorities are now inclined to agree. 



