254 Contributions to the Ornitliology of India, 8fe. 



some relative, six children, two pelicans^ six or eig-lit herons, g'rey 

 and white, a couple of cormorants, a kid, a dog", and otter spears, 

 nets, lines, hooks, and the like of all descriptions. In such a 

 menag'erie the mahanahs will live for months, cooking-, eating-, 

 sleeping-, in fact living wholly in tliis one boat, thong'h doubtless 

 generally landing- daily for an hour or so, to exchange their 

 surplus fish. At other seasons or in other places, they put up 

 tiny reed huts by the water^s edg-e, and live in these instead 

 of in their boats. 



928— Demiegretta gularis, Bo.^c, Actes Soc. 



cVhist. Nat,, I. p. 4, tab. 2 ; — J. albicolUs, Vieillot. — A. 

 schistacea, Lichtenste'm. — A. asha, Sykes. 



Professor Schlegel and Mr. Gray are certainly wrong in 

 uniting aska, Sykes, with Jngularis, Forster ; they are probably 

 right in considering concolor, Blyth, as identical with this latter; 

 but aska of Sykes is gularis, and not jugularis. The fact is 

 there are two nearly allied species, the one occurs along the 

 eastern and north-eastern coast of Africa up to Suez down 

 the Arabian Coast, and has now been observed by me at Mus- 

 cat, along the Mekran Coast, and at Kurrachee, and again on 

 the Bombay Coast at Teetul, near Bulsar; and Dr. Jerdon^s 

 description shows clearly that this is the bird which he and 

 Sykes found down the western coast of India. This is 

 gularis ; on the other hand, the second species is found in New 

 Zealand, Australia, throughout the Indian Archipelago, and I 

 have reason to believe, though I have no specimens with me 

 to compare, throughout Burma, up to Ramree Island, in the Ni- 

 cobars and Andamans, and possibly on the eastern shores of the 

 Bay of Bengal. This latter is jngulanh, Forster ; pannosa, Gould ; 

 concolor, Blyth ; and probably sacra, Gmelin, the name by which 

 it should according to Mr. Gray stand. Both species are ty- 

 pically, when adult, deep slaty blue, becoming more or less black 

 in old birds ; both seem to have an allotropic white form, which 

 is not necessarily the young, these having been taken from the 

 nest of the same dark color as the typical adult, and both have 

 a light slaty grey stage, which appears to me to indicate imma- 

 turity, in which a good deal of the centre of the abdomen, vent, 

 and lower tail coverts are white. 



The two species differ in these respects. Gularis has the whole 

 chin, thi'oat, and sides of the head nearly to the gape, and quite 

 to the base of the ear coverts, white ; jugularis or sacra has only 

 a narrow white stripe down the centre of the throat ; gularis is 

 a somewhat larger bird, has the bill in adults from 3"5 to 4-1, 

 against a bill of 3-1 to 3-4 in jugularis j a tarsus of from 3*9 to 



