Contributions to the Ornithology of India, Sfc. 115 



those of the cream coloured, aud Coromandel coursers. The 

 feet too are short and unlarklike. No one can doubt that it is 

 a niodilied Galerita, just as the coursers are modified plovers, 

 and to my mind the reason of the legs of all having- assumed 

 this peculiar opaque china white aspect, is that this forms 

 the best protection against the intense heat of the tropical sun- 

 baked sands which they affect ; near these I shot an Ammomanes 

 lusitania (the first I have noticed since leaving the salt range) and 

 saw several others. Saxicola deserti, (or atrogtdaris) and picata 

 and all the birds previously noticed. At Jacobabud, I found the 

 ravens very numerous, and saw several l.ying about dead, and 

 Col. Phayre and many other officers remarked upon the curious 

 fact that when the ravens fir.-t come in here (the_y are only cold 

 weather visitants) numbers die, and again just as they are leav- 

 ing, many die, and all seem to fancy that this is due to the heat, 

 Jacobabad being about the hottest place in India except in the 

 middle of the cold weather. As to the fact of their dving, I 

 can testify ; as to the cause of this strange mortality which invari- 

 ably occurs every autumn and spring, 1 am entirely in the dark, 

 but as many as a dozen may often be seen just v^^hen they first 

 come in, lying within a circle of a hundred yards. Jacobabad itself 

 is full of magnificent avenues of trees ; its roads are laid out 

 parallel, and at right angles to each other and very close, and 

 each road, throughout the whole large cantonment, is bordered on 

 each side by a row of lofty and umbrageous trees, and it is this 

 grand collection of trees in the midst of a sort of desert and the 

 abundant offal of a large cantonment that tempts, apparently, so 

 many ravens to what is quite as unhealthy a locality to them as 

 it is to human beings. 



In these trees we got Yunx torqitilla, and a Brachyptenms 

 which ought to be dilutus, but which in the absence of 

 specimens with which to compare it, I should have called 

 " aurantms." 



Every one here declares that six species of sand grouse visit 

 the neighbourhood. Specimens of three, viz Pterocles arena- 

 rius, exustus, and coronatas (a species now first ascertained to 

 belong to our Avifauna) were brought me. Dr. Day brought 

 me Plocens manyar, killed in some reeds, near Shikarpoor, also 

 Folwrnis teesa and Halcyon smyrnensis (the latter being very 

 numerous, he informs me, we have seen very few as yet) killed 

 between Shikarpoor and Jacobabad 



20^!^. — Jacobabad. I saw nothing to record. 



215/. — Went out a few miles towards Dhoon. Swept round 

 by Mummul and near Rojan, and again round to the north of the 

 cantonment and then home. 1 never saw any tract of country 



