280 Mr. E. L. Layard on the 



salt plains of the north, transported to the well-remembered 

 haunts in the lovely " Lanka " by Captain Legge's spirited 

 narrative. 



So vivid have been my impressions, though some six and 

 twenty years have passed since I left its shores and ceased to 

 work in its fauna, that the " mysterious chambers of the brain " 

 have given up memories long locked up in them, and incidents 

 of collecting, of travelling, of individual specimens even, 

 seem to stand forth one by one, like pictures in dissolving 

 views, one, as it fades, calling up another. Some of these 

 reminiscences may not be useless to the future explorers of 

 Ceylonese ornithology ; I therefore jot them down as they 

 occur to me. 



Nisaetusfasdatus. The specimen in the Poole Museum is 

 Dr. Templeton's specimen ! I now remember it perfectly 

 well. My dear old friend gave it to me, with a few other 

 specimens, when he left the island, and it thus came into the 

 Poole collection, never having been replaced by a better. 



My first connexion with the ornithology of Ceylon may 

 well be detailed here. 



I arrived in Ceylon in March 1846, and for some time, 

 having no employment, amused my leisure in collecting for 

 my more than friend, Dr. Templeton, who had nursed me 

 through a dangerous illness, and in whom I found a con- 

 genial spirit. My chief attraction then was the glorious Le- 

 pidoptera of the island ; but I always carried a light single- 

 barrelled gun in a strap on my back, to shoot specimens for 

 the Doctor. He himself, like Dr. Kelaart, never shot, but 

 depended on his friends for specimens. I, of course, soon 

 became interested in the " ornis ;" and on Templeton's 

 leaving, at the end of 1847 or beginning of 1848, he begged 

 me to take up his correspondence with the late Edward 

 Blyth, then curator of the R. A. S. Calcutta Museum*. 

 He left me his list of the species then known to exist in 

 the island, numbering 183, and Blyth's last letter to answer. 

 From that day almost monthly letters passed between the 



* All Ceylonese species therefore (except Kelaart* s) described by Blyth 

 after this date were discovered by me. 



