NOTES. 233 



the rump are chestnut, not the maroon of the common 

 Sparrow, and descending right to the lower tail-coverts. There 

 is no black and no white band on the wing. The whole of 

 the lesser and medium wing-coverts are chestnut, but the 

 greater secondary and tertiary coverts and tertiaries, instead 

 of being as in the common Sparrow, so broadly edged with 

 rufous as in the closed wing, to leave scarcely any other 

 colour visible, are, in pyrrhonotus, hair brown like the quills, 

 narrowly margined with pale fulvous or whitey brown. 



The 2nd to the 6th or 7th primaries have the outer webs at 

 the bases a dull white (not in the least fulvous), forming a 

 distinct wing spot. On the interscapulary region there are a 

 few black streaks similar to, but less strongly marked than in, 

 the common Sparrow. There is the usual black throat stripe, 

 but though the specimen sent was a breeding male, this stripe 

 only occupies one-third of the breadth of the throat, instead 

 of at least one-half, as in the common Sparrow, and does not, 

 as in this latter, descend on to the breast ; the ear-coverts are 

 a grey, with a dusky line dividing them from the chestnut of 

 the side of the posterior part of the head. With these excep- 

 tions the plumage of the male does not differ from that of the 

 common Sparrow, but the total length cannot have exceeded 

 4*8' against 6 5 in the common Sparrow; the wing is only 

 2*6 against 3*0 to 3'2 in the common Sparrow; the tarsus, 

 very slender, is 0'65 against, say, 0*75 to 0'8 in the common 

 Sparrow, and the mid-toe and claw about 0*6 against 08 in 

 domesticus; bill at front from margin of feathers 04, and 

 therefore very little shorter than that of the common Sparrow, 

 but very much more slender. 



The female similarly differs in the small feet and bill from 

 the female of the common sparrow ; but the only specimen 

 sent is so extremely indifferent, the bird being in moult to 

 begin with, and having had at least half the feathers shot out, 

 that I can only say that the plumage seems very close to that 

 of female domesticus, but with less striation on the interscapu- 

 lary region and a greyer crown, and that it appears also to 

 show the white wing spot, which in the female, as in the male, 

 domesticus is far less marked, and pale fulvous. 



Of the distinctness of this species there can be no doubt. 

 It is none of the African Sparrows, castanopterus, motitensis, 

 Sivainsoni, simplex, diffusus, &c, and it seems to be a 

 thoroughly good species. How it is that it has for so long 

 escaped notice, (the only specimen previously obtained having 

 been procured fully forty years ago by Sir Alexander Burnes, at 

 Bhawalpur,) we shall be better able to explain when we know 

 more about the distribution of the bird. It is not impossibly 

 an Arabian species which only comes to Sindh to breed, but we 



