MIRAFRA CHENIANA. 65 



crop next to the lower neck. "Iris pale brown; bill dusky brown; feet 

 brown." Total length 5 inches, culmen 0-45, wing 30, tail 2-0, tarsus 0-9. 

 ? , 16. 12. 97. Ujawaji (Hawker). 



The Singiug Bush-Lark ranges from Somaliland and 

 Abyssinia eastward through Arabia into India. 



Mr. R. McD. Hawker shot the first African specimen of 

 this species at Ujawaji in SomaUland, December 16, 1897, and 

 finding it to be distinct from all other known African Larks, 

 he made it the type of his M. margiiiata. More recently Mr. 

 Percival has brought to England a series of six specimens 

 from the neighbourhood of Lehej in Arabia, and these, together 

 with three skins procured by Mr. A. E. Pease at Filwa in 

 Southern Abyssinia, clearly prove, as Mr. Ogilvie Grrant has 

 already pointed out, that Mirafra marginata, Hawker, and 

 Geocora])lms simplex, Heuglin, belong to one species, and should 

 not be separated from Mirafra cantillans, Blyth, described in 

 1844, fiom a Madras specimen now in the British Museum. 

 The type of Geocorajyhits simplex was obtained by Hemprich 

 and Ehrenberg at Gonfode on the Arabian coast, nearly opposite 

 to Suakin, and should be in the Berlin Museum. According 

 to Mr. Pease the species frequents places covered with long 

 grass, and has a rapid straight flight. 



Mirafra cheniana. 



Mirafra cheniana, Smith, 111. Zool. S. Afr. Aves, pi. 89, fig. 2 (1843, err. 

 pro fig. 1) Latakoo ; Sharpe, Cat. B. M. xiii. p. 603 (1890) Latakoo, 

 Whittlesea Flats ; Shelley, B. Afr. I. No. 201 (1896) ; Stark, Faun. 

 S. Afr. B. i. p. 215 (1900). 



Adult. Above mottled, pale rufous brown, with broad dark centres to 

 the feathers. Wings more rufous than the back ; the rufous edges on 

 the quills extending across about half of the outer and half of the inner 

 webs ; under wing-coverts of a uniform pale cinnamon, like the inner 

 margins of the quills. Tail blackish brown with the pale pattern white and 

 extending on to the three outer pairs of feathers ; both outer and penul 



January, 1902. 5 



