319 
position and the intensity of the black shaft stripes, another race 
appears to occur in Java, Siam, Sumatra, Timor, Flores, Borneo, 
and the Philippine islands, which is probably Fulco Pondiceria- 
nus of Horsf. but which Mr. Gurney considers, should be distin- 
guished as H. intermedius. Mr. Wallace, however, as I gather 
‘from his paper in the Ibis for 1868, considers this form identical 
with the Indian. 
Mr. Blyth had the following interesting remarks, on these 
closely allied species. 
“ According to Pro. Schlegel, this species (H. Indus) is spread 
from Nepaul to the Philippines. H. Lewcosternus, Gould, he 
remarks, is founded on the absence of the black median stripes 
on the feathers of the white portion of the plumage, “a character, 
purely accidental.” This view is irreconcilable with the 
fact that these marks are invariably strongly developed 
in the Indian race, while in the Javan race (extending 
to Siam) they are present but only slightly developed, the 
white feathers being merely black-shafted. Specimens from 
Bouru, Gilolo, and Aru are of the true Australian race, without 
even the shafts of the white feathers, black and contrasting. 
Three Indian specimens and a Javan one were lately to be seen 
together in the Gardens of the Zoological Society, the difference 
between them being very conspicuous. Of the immense num- 
ber which I have examined or beheld close in India, I certainly 
never saw even one resembling or approximating to the Java- 
nese bird. The intermediate Javan race (H. intermedius, ‘ Ibis,’ 
1865, p. 28,) is possibly the result of intermixture, and it may 
be, that there isa greater or less development of the black streaks 
in the Malayan province according to the proportions of that 
intermixture, constituting a gradation or transition from the 
Indian race to the Australian, as in some other instances, where 
contermincus races blend ; and this would lead observers in that 
particular Zoological province, to suppose the absence, or amount 
of development of the streaks, to be “ purely accidental.” The 
near affinity of the fine large African Haliastur vocifer to the 
“ Brahminy Kite,” noticed by Professor Schlegel, struck me 
immediately, on beholding the pair of the former, now living in 
the Zoological Gardens; but the voice is very different, that of 
H. indus being a peculiar sort of d/eat, quite unlike the shrill 
cries of most of the Falconide, and the barking notes of others.” 
It is the Indian species that occurs in Ceylon; at any rate a 
specimen received thence is undistinguishable from our uwp-coun- 
try birds, and the same may be said of a specimen sent me from 
Rangoon. 
——— 
