186 Mr. H. Seebohm on the 



comes to the conclusion that the pale southern ally of O. al- 

 pestris with the white throat has not got a name, and pro- 

 poses for it that of O. brandti. On page 398 he gives its 

 geographical distribution as " probably restricted to the 

 steppes of Southern Russia." Nevertheless it is a most 

 remarkable fact that Dresser's ' Birds of Europe ' does not 

 contain an article on a bird named by Dresser himself and 

 supposed by him to be confined to Europe. As a matter 

 of fact, the type appears to be a Sarepta skin, and there is 

 also a skin from Astrakan in the British Museum ; but the 

 latter has only recently been added to the national col- 

 lection*. 



I doubt if a more puzzling bit of ornithological chaos 

 than this could be found anywhere. It took me a week's 

 hard work to unravel it ; but by a careful measurement and 

 comparison of all the skins in my own collection and in that 

 of the British Museum, I came to the conclusion that O. 

 longirostris was a pale subtropical ally or representative of 

 O. alpestris, which ranges across Central Asia from the basin 

 of the Caspian to Mongolia, extending northwards through 

 the Altai Mountains to Dauria, and southwards into the 

 Himalayas. O. alpestris is a bird of the tundra, whilst O. 

 longirostris is a bird of the steppes, and breeds from one to 

 two thousand miles south of its arctic ally. The differences 

 in size in the latter species at first puzzled me, but by com- 

 paring measurements of skins from different localities I came 

 to the conclusion, to which I still adhere, that O. brandti 

 and 0. longirostris cannot be separated ; they are, in fact, 

 united by O. elwesi-\, as Dresser might possibly have observed 



* Finsch, in his account of the Shore-Larks found by him in South- 

 west Siberia, states positively that the black on the breast joins that on 

 the cheeks ; but in two examples from his collection, now in the British 

 Museum, this is not the case. He probably got both species, as Severtzow 

 also obtained both in North-west Turkestan. 



t Severtzow at first separated O. brandti of North-west Turkestan 

 from O. longirostris of East Turkestan (Ibis, 1876, p. 181) j but later 

 he apparently united them, for in his " Birds of the Pamir " (Ibis, 1883, 

 p. 61 ) he speaks only of O. ehvesi, adding that " in the Pamir a subspecies 

 with a rather long beak predominates, but this difference is neither con- 

 siderable nor constant." 



