354 QN TWO SPECIES OF BATRACHOSTOMUS. , 



age, the young male, and Hodgson's young bird similar to 

 0. Uodgsoni, but duller in its colors, the young female, but I 

 confess that this hardly seems to me probable, In the mean- 

 time these birds are so rare and have had so little attention 

 paid to them by Indian ornithologists that I cannot but hope 

 that this notice, crude as it is, may do some good by bringing 

 prominently to notice the difficulties that encompass the question. 



The other bird from Ceylon, answers to no species that I 

 can find anywhere described. The bill is that of a true Bat- 

 TQclwstomuS) enormously large for the size of the bird, and the 

 tarsi are feathered almost to the toes ; the fifth quill is the 

 longest, the fourth sub-equal, and the third only slightly shorter. 



The dimensions are as follows:— Length, 7*75 ; wing, 4*3; 

 tail, barely 4 ; bill from gape, 1*3 ; bill, width at gape, 1*2 ; 

 bill from brow, Q-6 ; tarsus, 0:5 ; mid toe and claw, Q'75 ; 

 hind toe and claw, 0*4. 



The nareal and frontal bristles are fulvous brown, at base 

 tipped black ; the aural are pale fulvous brown ; the forehead 

 is greyish, or brownish white, minutely freckled or powdered 

 with darker brown ; the whole of the rest of the top and the 

 back of the head is a darkish hair brown, the feathers more or 

 less minutely powdered with pale yellowish brown ; some of the 

 feathers of the front of the head above the frontal band, with 

 narrow black tips, with a speck of buff at the extreme point of 

 the tips; all the nuchal feathers tipped with a white band 

 between two narrow black lines, forming a very regular and 

 conspicuous demi-color ; the back and the inuer webs of the 

 scapulars dark brown, the feathers powdered towards the tips 

 with reddish buff; the outer webs of the scapulars, more of a 

 silvery greyish ground, powdered over with brown ; each sca- 

 pular with a small velvet black spot at the tip, some of the 

 feathers with a minute buff speck at the extreme tip ; the 

 coverts much like the back, but with a conspicuous white spot, 

 more or less surrounded by a black line at the tips ; the 

 primaries hair brown, more or less blotched, and mottled on 

 their outer webs, and freckled on their tips with pale dingy 

 rufescent white ; the tertiaries and the tips of the later secon- 

 daries much like the outer webs of the scapulars, a greyish 

 white ground, powdered and freckled with greyish brown, and 

 some few of them with tiny black spots at the tips ; centi'al 

 tail feathers banded indistinctly and irregularly with a pale whitey 

 brown, and pale hair brown, freckled and mottled all over both 

 with a darker brown, and with here and there indistinct traces 

 of a zigzag black line bounding the lighter band, AvhicU 



