ON A BARE AFRICAN PLOVER. 411 



fact seems to have been overlooked that well-known collectors are 

 frequently in the habit of receiving from their friends specimens 

 from all parts of the world. 



In the ' Catalogue of the Specimens and Drawings of Mam- 

 malia and Birds of Nepal and Thibet' presented by Hodgson to 

 the British Museum, and printed by order of the Trustees in 1846, 

 no mention of this Ringed Plover is to be found * ; and there can 

 be no doubt tbat, had Hodgson procured it himself, it would have 

 been certain, from its dissimilarity to all other species of /Egialitis 

 found in India, to have attracted his particular attention, and to 

 have found a place amongst his beautiful drawings of birds now in 

 the British Museum. It may therefore be stated with some degree 

 of certainty that the specimen of " Charadrius indicus, Latham," so 

 called, in the Leiden Museum, although received from Hodgson, 

 then resident in Nipaul, was not procured by him in that 

 country. 



Who, then, identified this specimen with Charadrius indicus, 

 Latham ? Was it so identified correctly ? and was Latham's 

 type procured in India, as the specific name bestowed by him 

 would imply ? These are some of the questions which require 

 elucidation in any attempt to unravel the history of the bird 

 before us. It was probably Temminck who identified Hodgson's 

 specimen with indicus of Latham, and ornithologists can scai'cely 

 be blamed for having accepted until now without hesitation the 

 opinion of so able a predecessor. t 



I myself certainly accepted this identification until the acqui- 

 sition of a second specimen of the bird, under circumstances 

 presently to be noticed, afforded me an opportunity of a further 

 examination of the questions at issue. 



Latham's description of his Charadrius indicus, in his ' Index 

 Ornithologicus,' 1790 (vol. ii. p. 750), is very brief: — 



" Charadrius fuscus, subtus albus, pectore fasciis duabus 

 fuscis, rectricibus basi albis. Habitat in India. Magnitudo 

 Alaudse. 6 poll, longus." 



* A second edition of this Catalogue was printed in 1863, but contains no 

 reference to the species in question. 



t In 'The Ibis' for 1867 (p. 165) Blyth wrote— "Both Mr. G. R. Gray 

 and I have in vain sought to identify Charadrius indicus of Latham (nee 

 Ruppell)." 



