Mr. R. B. Sharpe on Saxicola monticola. 337 



pared series of skins brought home by us, and now in the 

 hands of Capt. G. E. Shelley (who has, with his usual kind- 

 ness, afforded us the greatest assistance in our investigations), 

 and to the fact that the entries on the labels may be implicitly 

 relied upon, having been recorded with the greatest care in 

 the flesh at the time the specimens were procured. 



XXX. — Note on Saxicola monticola, with special reference to 

 the Observations of Majors Butler and Feilden and Capt. 

 Reid. By R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. 



I NEED hardly state with what pleasure I have perused the 

 very valuable notes given in the preceding paper. I was so 

 convinced that my account of the black-and-white Chats, 

 given in my edition of Layard's ' Birds of South Africa,^ was 

 not exhaustive, that immediately on the conclusion of this 

 portion of my work I wrote out to all my correspondents in 

 South Africa begging them to send me as quickly as possible 

 complete sets of these birds, in pairs, if possible, and with 

 the dates of capture carefully recorded. Two of my friends, 

 Mr. Lucas of Rustenberg, and Dr. Exton, the curator of the 

 Bloemfontein Museum, at once responded to my request ; and 

 Mr. Seebohm, when he wrote the fifth volume of the ' Cata- 

 logue of Birds,' had quite a score of specimens more than I 

 had at my disposal when I wrote my account of the South- 

 African Chats. I was not a little disappointed, therefore, 

 when I found that Mr. Seebohm could only reconcile the 

 variations in plumage in the black-and-white Chats of 

 South Africa by bringing in his favourite theory of inter- 

 breeding ; and I felt that, although the work done by 

 Messrs. Blanford and Dresser in their monograph, and by 

 myself in the ' Birds of South Africa,' was not conclusive, I 

 was sure that Mr. Seebohm's attempt to settle the matter by 

 the theory of hybridization would prove to be unavailing. 



The Chats of South Africa are not the only birds of that por- 

 tion of the globe of which the changes of plumage are exceed- 

 ingly difficult to follow ; and it would be much to be regretted 



