230 Letters, Announcements, &;c. 



along the high road picking among the droppings of horses 

 and cattle. They were in groups of half a dozen, and very tame, 

 merely flying up to the branch of one of the trees lining the 

 road, where they basked in the sun-light, sidling to one 

 another with rounded back and drooped wings and tail, 

 and talking amongst themselves in coaxing tones. I shot a 

 pair. They were in worn and faded plumage, and very mangy- 

 looking. They had the iris, beak, legs, and claws pale lemon- 

 colour ; inside of the mouth orange-yellow. The male had 

 the testes white and small ; the female numerous small eggs 

 in a backward state. The stomachs of both contained rice- 

 and grass-seeds. They were often to be observed clustered 

 at the base of cocoanut-fronds. 



I shot also a Buchanga leucopygialis (Blyth) , and a small 

 Centropus, which, as it certainly is not C. rufipennis, I took 

 for C. chlororhynchus . Both the specimens I procured of this 

 were females, and I thought possibly the female of this species 

 might have the bill black. I find now that this is not so. 

 Our bird differs from C. rufipennis in being much smaller and 

 having a larger bill, in having broader tail-feathers, black, 

 only lightly tinged and obscurely barred across. The beak 

 between the scapulars is blue-black, like the neck ; and the 

 scapulars are a much darker and richer chestnut than the 

 wings. Its differences are conspicuous when compared with 

 C. sinensis, which was not the case with the Bengal C. rufi- 

 pennis. The females are in adult plumage, which is much the 

 same as that of the male. Length about 17j inches, wing 7j, 

 tail 9|. It is possible that the true C. rufipennis (so called) of 

 Bengal, may be found in the north of Ceylon ; but I should 

 think the South-Ceylon form was worthy of distinction. 



At Penang I was so fortunate as to pick up a bright ex- 

 ample of a pigmy Centropus of the rufipennis type, which I 

 thought must be the true C. eurycercus, A. Hay, and that I 

 had hitherto mistaken that bird ; but Lord Walden's article 

 "on the Birds of Celebes " (Trans. Z. S. vol. viii. pt. 2), has 

 come opportunely to hand, and teaches me (p. 57) that my 

 Malacca bird is C. rectunguis, Strickland. 



In Galle Cecropis hyperythra was flying about in small 



