Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^'C. 575 



a Shore Plover that he obtained on the Tso-morari with 

 yE.leschenaulti { = jE.geojfroyi), but Jerdon rightly re- 

 ferred Adams's bird to M.pyrrhotUorax ( = ^. mongoli- 

 cus), as Harting showed (Ibis^l870, p. 382), and the same 

 species was obtained in the Upper Sutlej valley by 

 Stoliczka (J. A. S.B. xxxix. p. 69; Ibis, 1868, p. 321). 

 This, therefore, is far more likely to have been seen in 

 Suru than j:E. geojfroyi, which is seldom found away 

 from sea-coasts. 



Unfortunately, names once published in ' The Ibis ' are 

 likely to be quoted as evidence of the occurrence of the birds 

 to which they apply, and to be included in local lists, unless 

 attention is at once called to the possibility of a mistake. 

 This, I hope, will be accepted as my excuse for the preceding 

 criticism. 

 July 30tli, 1894. W. T. Blanford. 



Sir, — It has always been difficult to obtain examples of 

 the Grey Partridge (Perdiw cinerea) from Sj)ain, because, in 

 addition to the fact that the bird is an article of food, it is 

 also very local, and almost, if not quite, confined to the 

 mountain-districts of the northern half of the Peninsula. 

 Not being numerous enough to be an ordinary object of 

 pursuit, specimens rarely come into the markets of the towns, 

 and when they do are immediately secured for the table by 

 the housewives, who get up very early in the morning and 

 arrive on the scene of action long before the average tourist 

 or even naturalist. Under the circumstances of comparative 

 isolation, it is not surprising that these Mountain-Partridges 

 of Spain should present some peculiarities in appearance ; 

 but upon this point, as well as upon the geographical dis- 

 tribution of the species in the Peninsula, I will quote some 

 MS. notes of our President, who is a past-master on the 

 subject : — 



" On first seeing a Spanish Grey Partridge in the flesh at 

 Barcelona in 1856, I was struck by its difference from the 

 form best known to me in England. In 1864 I examined 



