354 HIRUNDINIOE. 



representatives, Chelidon lagopoda, cannot as yet be laid 

 down, for Kussian ornithologists have hardly recognized 

 their distinctness. The latter however was alone found hy 

 Mr. Seehohm on the Jennisei,* but the former is said not to 

 be rare in Persia, and though as regards India it was only 

 known to Jerdon from one locality on the Neilgherries, 

 Tickell records it from Moulmein (J. A. S. B. xxiv. p. 277), 

 adding that large flocks occur in India from time to time a 

 statement confirmed by subsequent observers. In Arabia, 

 Egypt and Nubia, it is only a bird of passage, and since Mr. 

 Blanford obtained but a single specimen in Abyssinia in 

 February, it seems to winter more to the southward. The 

 same inference may be drawn from its being very scarce at 

 that season in Algeria though numerous there in summer. 

 But we know no more of its further African wanderings than 

 that Mr. Keulemans shot an example in January on Prince's 

 Island in the Gulf of Guinea, where he was told, says Mr. 

 Dresser, that it had not been before observed. It seems 

 also to be but a straggler in the Canaries and Madeira, and 

 is not recorded from the Azores. 



In the adult the Itill is black : the irides brown : the top 

 and sides of the head, nape, wing-coverts and back, rich, 

 glossy bluish-black, the feathers of the nape and back white 

 at the base ; rump and upper tail-coverts, except those next 

 the tail which are glossy bluish-black, white ; wing- and tail- 

 quills dull black, shafts white beneath ; chin and all the 

 lower part of the body white, as are the feathers which 

 cover the legs and toes ; axillaries and lower wing-coverts 

 pale brown : claws greyish horn-colour. 



The whole length is rather more than five inches and a 

 quarter ; from the carpal joint to the tip of the first primary, 

 which is the longest, four inches and a quarter. 



There is no external distinction of sex. The young are 

 sooty-brown above with hardly any gloss, and not of so pure 

 a white beneath, while the tail is shorter and less forked. 



* There they attempted to build nests on the masts of his ship. Herr Holm- 

 gren (Skand. Fogl. p. 377) quotes an account of our Martin building its nest 

 and bringing up a brood on board a steamer plying on the river Klar in Sweden. 



