150 On the Names of certain Birds. [Ibis, 



North India, though, of course, he probably meant it. The 

 next question is : Does an arvensis breed in the Him.alayas, 

 and, if so, is it different from the Siberian breeding bird ? Mr. 

 Whistler.and I have for some years searched the literature on 

 the subject, and although we have found plenty of statements 

 regarding the alleged breeding of this bird there, on exami- 

 nation it has invariably been proved that the authors had 

 mistaken a gulgula for arvensis. I could only find one author, 

 Mr. J. Davidson, who had recorded both arvensis and gulgula 

 breeding (in Kashmir) ; he kindly sent mo his supposed 

 arvensis, and it, too, turned out to be a gnlgula (guttata). 

 Mr. Whistler also, and his numerous correspondents in the 

 Himalayas have failed to produce a breeding arvensis from 

 those mountains, nor are there any among the huge series 

 in the British Museum, nor in the Tring Museum. One is 

 forced, therefore, to the conclusion that a breeding arvensis 

 in the " Alpine Region of North India " is a myth. The 

 question then arises : Do the winter birds from the plains 

 of India differ in any way from the Sky-Larks of Siberia 

 in similar plumage ? and I cannot see that they do so. 

 Therefore this eastern Sky-Lark should in future be called 

 Alauda arvensis dulcivox Brooks, and cinerascens Ehmcke 

 becomes a synonym. 



Whilst on the subject of Himalayan Sky-Larks, I may call 

 attention to a curious statement by Mr. Richmond. In a 

 list of birds of Kashmir (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. xviii. p. 467) 

 he gives Alaiida arvensis intermedia as a breeding bird in that 

 country. He explains that it is the Alauda guttata of other 

 authors, but that as Kashmir and Shanghai (the type-locality 

 for intermedia) birds are the same, intermedia has priority. 

 I cannot agree — Swinhoe's intermedia belongs to the arvensis 

 group, and is consideratly larger and of quite a different 

 colour to Brooks^s guttata, which belongs to the gulgula group. 

 Richmond, of course, wrote this as long ago as 1895, when 

 these Larks were not so well understood as they are now ; 

 and so it is all the more surprising to find that Mr. Stuart 

 Baker has recently perpetuated Richmond's error (Journ, 

 Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. xxvii. p. 740). 



