329 
is large and well forked, and the tail feathers very broad ; im a 
specimen before me, the central tail feathers, are 2°5 inches 
broad, 3 inches from the tip; at present I only know of five 
specimens, one in Col. Tytler’s museum and four in my own 
(one lent by Mr. W. Brooks). 
At all stages, the colouring is richer than in the common 
type, and the patch behind the eye and over the ear coverts 18 
darker and more strongly marked. This peculiarity, and the 
fact that Radde’s figure of the young of Melanotis, almost 
exactly agrees with one stage of the young of the present 
species, led me at one time to identify the latter with the for- 
mer. Huropean naturalists, as a rule, give dimensions but spa- 
ringly, but after consulting such works of reference as were 
available to me, it appeared certain that birds, of which the 
females measure from 26°75 to 27°75 in length, and of which 
the wings vary from 21 to 23 inches, measured from the carpal 
joint, could not possibly belong to any known, old world species 
of Kite, with the exception of Regalis, from which their plumage 
differ toto clo, and I have therefore been compelled to consider 
them as belonging to a distinct species which I have charac- 
terized as Milvus Major. 
It is not only in size and a somewhat richer colouring that 
the present species differs from I. Govinda. The latter is a 
bold, tame bird, a denizen of the most crowded haunts of man. 
The greater Kite is a wild wary bird very difficult to approach, 
and found only in the open fields or in swamp or jungle. Its 
flight is heavier and more Buzzard-like, and though I have 
often seen it, since I first began to distinguish it, I have inya- 
riably failed to procure specimens. ‘This peculiarity of its 
habits, has been noticed by others besides myself. 'The gentle- 
man from whom Col. Tytler years ago received the specimen 
he now possesses, and which was procured in Lower Bengal, 
writing of it at the time, said that he had procured it with great 
difficulty, and had been induced to pursue it persistently, 
believing it to have been some species of Buzzard. Mr. Brooks 
has, equally with myself, noticed its extreme wariness, and has 
failed to obtain a second specimen, though he too has continually 
seen and pursued it. 
It appears to be only a winter visitant to the plains, at which 
season 1 procured a specimen near Ajmeer, (Mr. Brooks shot 
his in Etawah,) but I feel confident that I have observed it 
throughout the summer and rainy season, in the Himalayahs, 
from which Capt. Hutton, not long ago, sent me a specimen, 
with the remark that it was ‘the finest Kite’’ he had ever seen. 
I know as yet nothing of its nidification, and nothing further 
of its distribution than I have already mentioned, but doubtless, 
