320 BIRDS OCCURRING IN INDIA NOT DESCRIBED 



This species is of the same group as P. cineveocapilla and 

 P. stewarti, but is distinguished from both by trenchant charac- 

 ters, which may be expressed in the following synoptic table :• — 



a. Back grey, as also the entire head Stewarti. 



b. Back rufescent brown, contrasting with the head, which 

 is grey. 



a ' Forehead grey, like the crown .poliocephala. 



b l Forehead fulvous ; crown of head grey, cinereocapilla. 



— P.Z.S., 1878, 370. 



girfts occuroitfi tit gntia, not ksatbeb in lerixw ar iit&evto 

 in " $ttag Jfeatjefs/' 



In preparing the rough tentative list, which I have been so 

 often urged to publish, of all the birds known or asserted, 

 within recent times, to occur within the limits of our Indian 

 Empire, with references to the passages in Jerdon's " Birds of 

 India" or Stray Feathers, in which they are described or 

 discriminated, I find many species of which no description has 

 appeared in either of these works. 



I proceed, therefore, preparatory to the publication of this 

 list, which is now with these exceptions ready to issue, to fur- 

 nish the wanting descriptions.* These I take from my own 

 %i Rough Notes," " Nests and Eggs," and my portion of Lahore 

 to Yarkand, articles, and letters to the Ibis, &c. ; from Sharpens 

 Catalogues, Dresser's great work on the " Birds of Europe," &c, 

 &c, the sources whence my extracts are drawn being duly 

 noted in each case. I have in some instances compressed the 

 descriptions. 



I do not say that I think these descriptions in all cases by 

 any means what they should be, f but I have no time now to 

 re-write these or prepare new ones, and all are I think sufficient 

 for most practical purposes. 



* To my European and American readers this will necessarily appear a pure waste 

 of paper, and so it is to those who possess or have access to Ornithological Libraries. 

 But STRAY FEATHERS is above all things a journal for Indian Field Naturalists 

 who possess no such facilities, and they absolutely require to have all these descriptions 

 available, and without these the list for which all are crying out would be even more 

 incomplete than my ignorance must necessarily after all render it. 



+ It is specially where some of the Raptores and the Ceylon birds are concerned 

 that the descriptions are meagre. The latter I have purposely avoided taking up in 

 any detail, as Captain Legge is about to produce a separate work on the Ornithology 

 of the Island. The very brief descriptions I have given will suffice to enable people 

 to identify the species, and if they require further details, they can refer to his work, 

 which will be immediately published. 



