28 Lieiit.-Col. J. W. Yevhnry —Farther Notes 



almost white tail ; (ii.) like the former, but wanting the 

 long tail ; and (iii.), a form hardly distinguishable from the 

 females. What does this mixing up of forms mean ? I con- 

 cluded it to indicate that these birds bred all the year round, 

 and the fact that form i. is rare, while form iii. is by far 

 the commonest, may lend some support to this, or it may 

 mean that the males begin to assume the canary-coloured 

 plumage at the end of the first year, but do not assume the 

 long tail till the beginning of the second. As the birds breed 

 gregariously, it would be difficult to identify the actual 

 owners of any particular nest. 



69. Passer domesticus (Linn.) ; Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. 

 xii. p. 307 (1888). 



Passer, sp. inc., Yerbury, Ibis, 1886, p. 18 ; Barnes, Ibis, 

 1893, p. 83. 



This is another bird that has increased tremendously in 

 Aden of late years, while it absolutely swarms at Lahej and 

 Shaik Othman. Formerly it was rare to see Sparrows any- 

 where in Aden except occasionally at the tanks ; now they 

 are to be found in many places, and have even established 

 themselves in the Crescent at Steamer Point, where I have 

 both seen and heard them several times in the verandah and 

 on the roof of the '' Hotel d^Europe.^"* 



In 1869, an ancient legend ran that somebody had im- 

 ported some Sparrows and turned them loose at the tanks. 

 These birds, finding Aden not a congenial abode, had migrated 

 forthwith to Lahej. I should be very sorry to say that they 

 were the ancestors of all the Sparrows now to be seen in 

 the neighbourhood, still it was a well-accepted story at that 

 time. 



I am still far from satisfied that the House- and Tree- 

 Sparrow do not both exist in Aden, and I know that some 

 others entertain the same idea. It was with the object of 

 proving this or the contrary that I brought skins from two 

 localities (Lahej and Shaik Othman), but I soon saw that, 

 so far as these two specimens were concerned, they were both 

 House- Sparrows . 



