and its Collection of Birds. 71 



In 1888 Dr. Scully handed over his very large collection 

 of Indian birds'-skins to the Indian Museum : they consisted 

 mainly of three separate collections, all made by the donor 

 himself, as follows : — 



(1) In Eastern Turkestan and Ladak in 1874, of which the 

 results were published in the fourth volume of ' Stray 

 Feathers/ 



(2) In Nepal in 1877, of which the results were also pub- 

 lished in the eighth volume of ' Stray Feathers,' 



(3) In Gilgit in 1879, of which the results were published 

 in 'The Ibis 'for 1881. 



During the last two or three years a native collector has 

 been employed with great advantage to increase the collec- 

 tion of birds'-skins. He has been sent to Perak, in the Malay 

 Peninsula ; to the Shevaroy Hills ; to the South Arcot district 

 and Bangalore, in the Madras Presidency; and to the Gya 

 district, in Bengal, 



These, of course, are only a very few of the more impor- 

 tant collections of birds that have been contributed to the 

 Museum, and besides these very large numbers of small 

 collections and individual specimens have been procured 

 from all parts of India and Burma, 



Some months ago I made a rough list of the birds of India, 

 founded on that published by Mr. Hume in the eighth 

 volume of ' Stray Feathers.' To Mr. Hume's list were added 

 all the species since described from the Indian Empire 

 properly speaking, all the species represented in the Persian 

 and the Central Asian collections in the Museum, and also 

 all the birds found in the Malayan Peninsula which have 

 not hitherto been recorded from the Indian Empire. 



The Table on p, 72 gives a summary of the number of 

 species recorded in this list, and of the number of species 

 represented and specimens contained in the Indian 

 Museum. 



From this Table it will be observed that there are examples 

 of 488 Indian species still wanting to make our collection 

 complete. It has been ray endeavour, since I have been in 

 charge of the bird-collection, to reduce this number as much as 



