288 Mr. W. T. Blanford on the African 



distinctions are slighter and the generic affinities more com- 

 plicated. Secondly, the power of flight gives birds peculiar 

 facilities for extending their range ; and it is onlj natural that 

 many forms should straggle into the province from the neigh- 

 bouring Himalayas, the Assam hills, and the Malabar region. 

 Hence in parts of the Bengal and Madras subprovinces a few 

 Malay forms are found which do not occur elsewhere in India. 

 Moreover certain species are to be met with, on hills which 

 rise to a considerable height, even in Central India. Thus 

 Myiophonus Horsfiehli has been found in Sirguja on Main 

 Pat, at Chikalda in Berar, at Pachmari, and at Mount Abu, 

 all of them hills rising to about 4000 feet or more above the 

 sea. At one of these localities, Chikalda, Hypsipetes ganeesa 

 was also shot, and it is said the typically and peculiarly Mala- 

 bar genus OcJiromela was seen. To include the birds found 

 on these very few isolated hill-tops in a list of the general 

 fauna of the surrounding country gives a completely false 

 idea. Is Fregilus gracalus to be included in tlie forms charac- 

 teristic of the Ethiopian fauna because it inhabits the moun- 

 tains of Abyssinia ? I have not time at present to enter into 

 the subject of these isolated remnants of a fauna which once in 

 all probability was more extensively diffused, thougli I by no 

 means think it inhabited the whole of India. It certainly, 

 however, must be omitted in estimating the fauna of the sur- 

 rounding country. 



Mr. Wallace gives a list of eighty -four Oriental genera of 

 birds found in Central India. Now, of these, twelve, viz. 

 Layardia, Garrulax^ Trochalopteroyi, Alcijjpe, Hypsipetes (with 

 the exception mentioned above), Irena^ Arachnothera, Hemi- 

 circus, MidleripicuSj Nyctiomis^ Batrachostomus^ and CollocaUa^ 

 have never been found, so far as I am aware, in the Indian 

 peninsula, except in the Malabar province ; three others, Hemi- 

 chelidon, Niltava, and Perdix are not known to occur south of 

 the Himalayas, the last named, as generally restricted, being 

 found no nearer than Tibet, and not being an Oriental genus 

 at all. Mr. Wallace probably includes Perdicula in Perdix. 

 This, however, is, so far as known, a form peculiar to India 

 and Ceylon, the Timor P. Raalleni being ajjparently but 

 dubiously affined. 



Of the remaining genera, twenty-one, viz. Ahrornis (one 

 species only, A. cantator), Larvivoray Ilemtpus, Pello?'neum, 

 DendropMla, Ckibia, Chaj^tm, NectaropMla, Dicceum, Eulabes^ 

 Nemoricola, Gecinus^ '^^g^^i Micropternus^ Rhopodytes, Surni- 

 cidus, Harpactes, Ceyx, Hydrocissa, Carpojjhaga, and Chalco- 

 phaps, are not, to the best of my knowledge, found outside 

 the Bengal and Madras subprovinces ; and I suspect Megalurus 



