192 LIST OF BIRDS IN MANIPUE, 



Logtak lake and throughout the swampy, low-lying portions 

 of the southern half of the basin it is very common. I found 

 it generally shy and watchful, and even if it allowed you to 

 approach within 35 or 40 yards, it would drop off its perch, 

 and dart away unseen through the grass stems the moment 

 any movement towards raising the gun was attempted. At 

 the beginning of April they were all in pairs, and males and 

 females, alike, were invariably perched near or at the top of 

 some high bare grass stem, that, while its leaves had all been 

 burnt, had itself, though singed and partly blackened, survived 

 the general conflagration, by which nine-tenths of the high 

 grass is purposely consumed as soon as it is dry enough in 

 February and March. I am inclined to believe that the Sindh 

 P. leucurus is even more different from the eastern form 

 than is the westerc dry country P. maurus from its eastern 

 form. Indeed I should not be surprised if hereafter the 

 eastern form should prove to require specific separation. 



The matter has yet to be worked out ; there is a very great 

 difference in the breeding and non-breeding plumages, but 

 with a very large series from Sindh, and a still larger from 

 Tipperah, Dacca and other places in Eastern Bengal, and about 

 40 specimens from Manipur, I have not one single specimen 

 from eastwards, male or female, in breeding or non-breeding 

 plumage, not separable at a glance from the true leucurus* of 

 Sindh. I find no intermediate forms. Males and females of the 

 eastern race are alike larger and larger-billed, and the males are 

 far more purely black, and the females far darker, than any Sindh 

 bird 1 have ever seen. And as I said before I can find no inter- 

 mediate links. I will not now propose a name, but I feel pretty 

 certain that one will have to be applied when a better Sindh 

 series can be compared. Almost all my Sindh birds were killed 

 in January and the first half of February, and the few killed later 

 are bad specimens, while, though I have two Tipperah and two 

 or three other eastern specimens killed in January and February, 

 the great bulk of these were killed between the middle of March 

 and the middle of April, so that a close and strict comparison, 

 such as would justify the creation of a new species in this 

 • variable genus, is not at present within my power. 



Though I have this species from all over Eastern Bengal 

 and as far west as Colgong, yet strange to say (though it must 

 of course occur) I have no single record of it from Assam, 

 Sylhet or Cachar. 



* Blyth applied the name first to a specimen collected by Barnes in 

 Siudh. 



