162 NOTES. 



6. P. fasciatus. — A permanent resident, breeding- freely with 

 us. Occurs throughout India north of the 16° N. Lat., and 

 west of the 85° E. Long., but only on and about the bases 

 and in the neighbourhood of dry low rocky bush-clad or 

 sparingly-wooded hills. 



7. P. lichtensteini. — A cold weather visitant, in small num- 

 bers, to the more western desert and hill portions of Sindh. 

 Since I first shot it in Upper Sindh, several specimens have 

 been sent me from near Sehwan, from the Erie hills, and 

 other localities. 



8. Syrrhaptes tibetanus. — Only occurs within our limits, on 

 the elevated desert plains of Ladak, but here very numerous 

 in places, and a permanent resident. It is not as Elliot 

 wrongly says near the salt lakes, but near the few, small fresh 

 water lakes, that are dotted about here and there that it is 

 most abundant. 



I shall always be glad to put on record in Stray Feathers 

 notices of the occurrence of any these species outside the limits 

 which my present experience leads me to assign to them. 



" The assertion made by Dr. Jerdon, B. of I., 118, that 

 " Mr, Phillips, under the name of Strix javanica, mentions it 

 " (Scelostrix candiday as living in long grass, and to be found 

 tl in abundance some miles from Hodal," has often puzzled ornitho- 

 logists in India. In the first place Hodal is entirely outside the 

 area to which S. Candida appears restricted ; in the second 

 place Hodal is impossible as a station for this species ; in the 

 third place it certainly does not occur there, where, besides 

 casual visitors like myself, residents have searched for it for 

 years. 



Looking into the matter I find that there is not the smallest 

 grounds for supposing that Philipps (not Phillips, as Jerdon 

 gives it) ever refered to S. Candida at all. 



Mr. Philipps' paper was prepared something like LeVaillant's ; 

 only in Mr. Philipps' case everything was done in good faith. 

 He did not preserve any specimens, but he recorded descrip- 

 tions, and to these descriptions Mr. Moore assigned names. 



What it comes to then is, that some Owl was very common 

 iu the grass about Hodal, and this fact remains unchanged to 

 this day. The grass swarms at times in the cold season with 

 Asio accipitrinus, the Short-eared Owl. Of one of these Owls 

 Mr. Philipps recorded a description. 



Later in England Mr. Moore considered this description to 

 have been intended for Strix javanica. As a matter of fact there 

 can be no doubt that what he described was the Short-eared 



