152 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. [Ibis, 



Dear Sik, — Mr. Hugh Whistler has made some very 

 interesting remarks ou a recent little article of mine on the 

 ''Nidification of the Indian Peregrines" (Ibis, 1917, p. 224). 



Mr. Whistler, I am afraid with some justice, calls atten- 

 tion to my rather loose use of the term " North-West 

 Frontier," for which I should have substituted " North 

 and North-West India." At the same time, although on 

 p. 225 I quote many observers as having " declared that it 

 bred in some numbers on the North-West Frontier," I give 

 no further details, and in the previous paragraph it will be 

 noticed I remark " Peregrines of some kind." 



To be exact, all one can say from what has been already 

 recorded, is that a Peregrine "of some kind" does un- 

 doubtedly breed ou the extreme N.W. Frontier from 

 Baluchistan to Chitral, and perhaps even farther north 

 and east. This race is almost certainly Falco peregrinus 

 babylonicus, but where it meets, as a breeding bird, F. p. 

 peregrinator there is, as yet, not much evidence. 



The only breeding birds I have seen from Kashmir have 

 been of the latter form, and this certainly breeds as far 

 north-west as Gilgit, though one female sent to me thence 

 for identification was to some extent intermediate. 



Subspecies, of course, are difficult to determine in the 

 areas where they link up, and I should think that 

 Mr. Whistler is probably correct in considering north 

 and western Kashmir as the country in which the two 

 forms are indeterminate, and that west of this only 

 babylonicus is to be found. In the cold weather either 

 form may be found almost anywhere in India, but naturally 

 more babylonicus \\'\\\ be found in the north-west, more 

 peregrinator in west and central India, and only this latter 

 in the eastern province. 



But there is yet another subspecies which visits India in 

 the winter, and this is Latham's F. p. calidm, which breeds 

 in the Kirgis Steppes and western Siberia and which is not 

 easy to distinguish froua F. p. peregrinus. This form seems 

 (vide Hartert, Vog. pal. Fauna, ii. p. 1047) to have an 



