40 Contribittions to the Ornithology of India, Sfe. 



of Jodhpoor^) and tlie eastern portions of Sindh itself, for from 

 ten to sixty miles witliin the frontier, are desert wastes. North- 

 wards and westwards, rug-g-ed ranges of inhospitable stone 

 heaps, varying- in height from E,()00 to 5,000 feet, where in- 

 habitants, animal life, vegetation and water are alike, save in excep- 

 tional localities, altogether wanting, hem in the province, and 

 divide it from the territories of the many Belooch clans that 

 compose the State of Khelat. Inside this boundary stretches 

 every where, for a breadth of from ten to fifty miles, a belt of 

 waste, only at very long intervals, brightened by villages, 

 " rari nantes in gurgite vasto," and their surrounding straggling 

 patches of cultivation, such as it is. About the middle of 

 Sindh, below Sehwan, offshoots of the bounding ranges of 

 rocky hills run out at right angles to the main ridg*es, right 

 down to the bank of the Indus, and lower down almost the whole 

 of the country west of the Indus is more or less pure desert, 

 broken up by low ridges of absolutely naked rocks. Southward 

 the sea bounds the province. 



To the birds, therefore, of the comparatively fertile plains and 

 uplands of India, there are but two routes left into Sindh, the 

 one by the valley of the Indus, where that river, with a narrow 

 strip of comparatively well- tilled country on either bank, enters 

 the province at its extreme north-eastern corner ; the other 

 on the south, where the western point of Cutch (the eastern- 

 most portions of which abut on Guzerat) all but touches the 

 Shahbunder district of Sindh. On the other hand, the hills, 

 with their broad fringe of desert, that bound the province north 

 and west, are precisely similar in character and appearance to 

 the Mekran Coast (as far, at any rate, as I explored it, viz., to 

 Gwader,) to the country about Muscat, about Aden, and along 

 such parts of the north-east coast of the Red Sea and the 

 Peninsula of Sinai as I have visited. 



It is therefore in no way surprising that, on the one hand, 

 many of the land birds most characteristic of the Indian Fauna, 

 such as Yultur Calviis, Sco]).; Gyps Indicus, Scop.; Gyps Bengal- 

 ensis, Lath.; Falco Feregrinator, Sund.; Hieraetus- Pemiatus, 

 Gmel.; Sjjilornis Checla, Dazid.; Pernis cristate, Ctw., Bulaca Ocel- 

 lata, Lesson. ; Nlnox Scntellatus, Faffi. ; Ftionoprogne concolor, 

 Sylces ; Merojos Fhilipjoensis, Lin.; Alcedo Bengalensis, Gmel.; 

 Fcdceornis Fw-pureiis,"^ Milll.; Xantholama Hamacephala, Miill.; 

 (■=Indic%is, Latham) ; Hierococcyoc Farins, Vahl.; Oxylophiis Jaco- 

 iinus, Bodd.{=Coccystes Melanoleucus, Gm.;) Sitta Castaneoventris, 



* Mr. Gray gives this from India genevidlj, ^Rosa, Eodd, while he gives 

 Bengalensis, Gm., from Nepal. Are these really two species ? This requires re- 

 investi gatiou. 



