FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 37 



The Malabar Scops is common in the north of the Ratnagiri 

 district, but less so as far as my present experience goes in the 

 south. It is entirely nocturnal, but its low, subdued call after 

 nightfall easily betrays its haunts. I have found it in holes of 

 trees in houses, and in nooks in dry wells. 



All the nests, six in number, I have found were got in Jan- 

 uary and February, in holes of mango and jack trees. Three 

 appears to be the maximum number of eggs. In two instances 

 two hard-set eggs were found. None of the nests contained any 

 lining but rotten tonchwood. One nest within ten feet of the 

 ground contained three hard-set eggs, on which the female was 

 sitting. The male, who was caught in a similar hole in an 

 adjoining tree, made no attempt whatever to claw or bite, but 

 submitted to his fate with great meekness. The eggs are in shape 

 and size almost exactly similar to those of Carine brama, but 

 they are decidedly more glossy, and have a more creamy tinge. 

 The average dimensions of seven eggs measured were 1'34 

 by 113. 



[Mr. Sharpe, it will be remembered, unites this species with 

 Scops bakhamoena, Penn. The very large series of it that, 

 thanks to Mr. Vidal and others, I now possess, enables me to 

 assert positively that, unless a vast number of other species, 

 which he retains, are also to be suppressed, rnalabaricus must 

 be retained. The rich, rufous, buff tint which always charac- 

 terizes the adults of this race, distinguishes them at a glance 

 from the widely-spread bakhamoena. It is far more difficult 

 to separate them from many specimens of both lempigi (I 

 mean the Malayan lempigi) and lettia. 



But if, besides my proposition, above quoted by Mr. Vidal, 

 that rainfall is the most important factor in this part of the 

 world in determining distribution, it be further admitted that 

 where a species (in many families at any rate) occurs in both 

 a scanty and a heavy rainfall region, the inhabitants of the 

 former are pale (often silvery), and of the latter dark (and 

 generally rufous), and that the size of races is influenced by 

 these conditions also, then I should have no difficulty in uniting, 

 not only bakhamoena and rnalabaricus, but a great many other 

 supposed species — just as we do now unite the pale and 

 silvery and dark and rufescent forms of Syrnium nivicolum and 

 Glaucidium brodii, from the N. W. Himalayas on the one 

 hand and Sikhim on the other. And this, although the ex- 

 traordinary difference in colour in the two races of the former 

 is so persistent, that during more than ten years Mr. Man- 

 delli never succeeded in getting a pale specimen in Sikhim, 

 and I never succeeded in getting a dark or at all rufous one 

 in the North- West. 



