OF OUR INDIAN STONECHATS. 135 



wiug-co verts are blackish brown or almost black ; the lower 

 part of the rump and upper tail-coverts pure white ; the outer 

 tail feathers, which are 025 shorter than the longest, very 

 narrowly margined on the outer webs towards the tips, and 

 at the tips with sordid white. A trace of the same, but at the 

 tips only, on the two next feathers on either side ; the entire 

 breast and part of the upper abdomen and sides a rich deep 

 cinnamon rufous, a color that can barely be matched for 

 richness just on the upper breast of the brightest colored 

 examples of our large Eastern Stonechat. In this latter 

 species the rufous color rapidly pales from the base of the 

 throat. In robusta it is uniform throughout and abuts directly 

 on the pure white of the middle of the abdomen, vent, and 

 lower tail-coverts ; the flanks also are mostly white, but they 

 are washed with a paler shade of the rufous of the breast ; 

 the extreme sides of the breast and all but the bases of the 

 axillaries pure white ; the visible portion of the lower wing- 

 coverts black, fringed with white ; the tibial plumes, black, 

 fringed with sordid white. Perhaps I should have called the tail 

 blackish brown instead of black ; the bill, legs, feet, are all black. 



Now the question arises, is this torquata^ There is nothing 

 extraordinary in an African bird finding its way to the Hills 

 ot Mysore. If not torquata, or at any rate one of the forms 

 known under the names of torquata, sybilla, pastor, &c, it may 

 be a local race like insignis. 



And here I must again repeat that insignis is not a bird of 

 the Eastern Himalayas as Mr. Sharpe gives it, and never 

 occurs in Nepal, whence Mr. Sharpe records Hodgson's type 

 specimen. Hodgson's type came from Segowlee, a canton- 

 ment in the plains of the Chumparun District, 16 miles south 

 of the Nepal frontier, {vide S. P., Vol. V., 1877, P . 132), 

 and the bird is, to this day, not uncommon along the plains 

 country at the foot of the Himalayas, stretching from the Bhutan 

 Doars at any rate (torn, cit, p. 496), to the Bustee and Gorak- 

 pur Districts, (S. F., VII., pp. 454 and 519). It is a bird of 

 the plains and not of the hills. 



To return to robusta it has to be noticed that according to 

 Mr. Sharpe's diagnosis and description (Cat. B. M. IV., 1 79,190), 

 this species if belonging to either of the two forms he admits 

 would be torquata, which he separates from sybilla, as having 

 the orange chest-patch large and occupying the whole breast 

 and flanks, while in sybilla this is restricted to the chest and 

 upper breast, the flanks and sides being white like the abdomen. 

 In the case of our bird the flanks however might more pro- 

 perly be called white, the tips of some of the feathers washed 

 with a pale shade of the breast color. 



