138 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



Ruticilla, Prinia, Drymoipus, and Pants, are sylvine genera, 

 very characteristic of the Indian region ^although the first aud 

 last are probably of Palaearctic, and the third of iEthiopic origin) 

 which are unrepresented in these islands. 



The great family of the Corvidw is here represented only by the 

 universal Bow-billed Corby that extends according to my 

 view (though some ornithologists still cut it up into several species) 

 throughout the Indian, Indo-Burmese, Indo-Malayan, and 

 A rchipelagian regions, and by an aberrant Dendrocitta, verging 

 on Crypsirina. 



Acridoiheres, so peculiarly an Indian genus, though withal 

 more or less represented in all the regions just mentioned, 

 is wholly unknown to the ornis of these islands, though tristis, 

 introduced by Colonel Ty tier, has multiplied (but without extending 

 elsewhere) on the little island of Ross, where a few pairs were 

 turned loose. 



The whole family of the Fringilidce, comprising the weaver- 

 birds, amaduvats, sparrows, buntings, finches and larks, only 

 put in an appearance per one wretched little resident Munia, 

 and an occasional straggling Euspiza aureola, absolutely so 

 far as our limits are concerned, a purely Indo-Burmese form. 



The extraordinary weakness of the representation of the 

 Rasorial order has already been noticed {ante, p. 126.) ; bustards 

 and coursers are (though this I think was inevitable from the 

 physical conditions of the case) unknown, and the storks and 

 Tantalida entirely wanting ; yet Falcinellus igneus is widely 

 diffused not only throughout the Indian, but the other regions 

 above mentioned, and Tantalus leucocephalus of India and 

 Burmah finds in Sumatra right up to Acheen Head a typical 

 successor in T. lacteus. The Lamellirostres are only repre- 

 sented by one Australian Mareca, not previously, I believe, 

 observed west of Macassar, and no single gull appears ever to 

 have been seen about the islands. 



If then we conclude, as I think we must, that the Avifauna 

 of the islands of the Bay of Bengal is essentially Indian, in the 

 restricted sense in which I use the term, as distinct alike from 

 Indo-Burmese and Indo- Malayan, Ave must accept the fact, with 

 the qualification, that we find it here in a most imperfect and 

 mutilated form, lacking more or less entirely a large proportion 

 of its most characteristic genera, the missing ones being not 

 merely, or chiefly, those, either unfitted for distant flights, or 

 lovers of an arid climate, but many of them amongst the 

 strongest and most widely distributed, and to which the climate 

 of these islands would appear in every way congenial. 



