37 



of t|e ISlalag i^nittsttla. 



Considering the number of years for which we English 

 have had a connection with the Malay Peninsula, considering 

 the myriads of specimens that have been sent thence, and 

 considering that the greater portion of its western side is 

 now virtually a portion of the British Empire, it does seem 

 strange that we should still be so profoundly ignorant of 

 its ornithology. 



Up to this date no attempt, so far as I know, has ever been 

 made to draw up even the roughest list of the species 

 that occur in it. What little information we have on the 

 subject is scattered about in fifty different catalogues and 

 books, and of this little an appreciable proportion is manifestly 

 unreliable. 



India is a bad place from which to work up the literature 

 of any subject, as our libraries (even my own) are so very 

 rudimentary, but it may help othei's who, like myself, think 

 that the time has really come for working out a little more 

 definitely the ornithology of the Malay Peninsula, to enu- 

 merate the few books and papers to which I have had access, 

 throwing any material light on the Avifauna of the western 

 half of the Malay Peninsula. 



Uyhn, P. Z. S., 1839,100.— A. and M. N. H., 1845, XVI, 



227. 

 Strickland, A. and M. N. H., 1844, XIII, 409. 

 Hartlaub, Rev. Zool, 1842 ; 1844, 401. 

 Ha^/, Madras Journal, XIII, 

 Stoliczka, J. A. S. B., XXXIX, 277, 1870. 

 Salvadori, Ucelli di Borneo. 

 fTalden, Ibis, 1871, 158. 

 Wallace, A. and M. N. H., 1855, XV, 95.— Ibis, 186S, 1, 215; 



1865, 365. 

 Moore, P. Z. S., 1854, 258 ; 1859, 443— (and Horsf.) Cat. 



Birds, Mus. E. I. C. 

 £li/fhf Cat. Mus. A. S. B. and J. A. S. B., passim. 

 Gray, Hand List of Birds. 

 Schlegel, Mus. P. Bas. 

 Sharpe, Catalogue, Birds, Brit. Mus. 

 Hume, Stray Feathers. 



Combining all these authorities, little more than three hundred 

 species were on record as pertaining to the western half 



