Mr. W. T. Blanford on Indian Owls. 529 



All these forms, however, differ from each other much as 

 other Owls do, those from drier tracts being greyer, those 

 from damper countries more rufous, and the size diminishing 

 to the southward. It ought to have been previously men- 

 tioned that, so far as is known, none of the forms of Scops 

 giu breed in the plains of India; all appear to migrate to the 

 hills at the breeding-season, so it is easy to understand how 

 local races like S. minutus and S. malayanus may originate. 

 But throughout the area there are found Owls much more 

 rufous than ordinary, and these, when the upper parts are 

 clear cinnamon, rufous, or chestnut, are known as 8. suma. 

 Jerdon (' Birds of India/ i. p. 136) and Blyth (Ibis, 1863, 

 p. 27, 1866, p. 255) have unhesitatingly identified S. sunia 

 with /S. giu (which, however, they knew by other names) ; 

 but Hume, in his ' Rough Notes,' p. 389, questioned this 

 decision, because Captain Hutton had found rufous nestlings, 

 and because, although Blyth had stated that a complete 

 gradation w^as shown by the skins in the Calcutta Museum, 

 Hume's examination of the skins did not lead him to the 

 same conclusion. With regard to the discovery of rufous 

 nestlings, an idea seems to have been prevalent amongst some 

 Indian ornithologists that the chestnut garb is assumed at 

 particular ages or in particular seasons, but I cannot find 

 any evidence to support this view. Hume, however, in sub- 

 sequent notes [e. g. * Nests and Eggs,' p. 65) insisted on the 

 distinction between S. sunia and ^. giu {pennatus), and 

 declared that they never pass into each other. He de- 

 scribed a skin, from the Nicobar Islands, of a darker and 

 more ferruginous tint than ordinary S. sunia, but with some 

 of the usual vermiculations of S. giu on the upper plumage, 

 as a new species, S. nicobar iciis. Subsequently Captain 

 Wardlaw Ramsay obtained another Nicobar specimen, de- 

 scribed by Mr. Gurney in ^The Ibis' for 1884, p. 172, 

 as having more unbroken colour than any other rufous 

 Owl he had examined. Nevertheless, he referred it to 

 S. nicobaricus. 



Now there are in the Hume collection Malaccan specimens 

 precisely similar to the type of Scops nicobaricus. These 



