170 THE INFLUENCE OF RAINFALL ON THE DISTRIBUTION 



with a single shot out of this flock, but never saw them again 

 any where. 



In a list of the birds collected by Captain Briggs, at that time 

 Deputy Commissioner of Tavoy, published by Gould, P. Z. S., 

 1859, 149, I find ineluded Zanclostomus {Taceocua) sirkee. 

 I can scarcely believe that Gould^s identification was in this case 

 correct, but still it is necessary to note the fact. 



I notice further that this same species is included by Gould in 

 the birds collected at Bangkok by Schomburgh. It occurs to 

 me that owing to the similarity of the color of the bills and of 

 the under parts, Mr. Gould, at a time when these birds were less 

 Avell-known, confounded Zanclostomus javanicus, Horsfield, which 

 we procured at Tavoy with sirJcee of J. E. Gray. Anyhow, at 

 present, I consider the occurrence of this latter species alike at 

 Tavoy and Bangkok as requiring confirmation. Possibly in some 

 later paper which I have not come across Mr. Gould may have 

 himself corrected this. 



I also find a specimen of Lanius colluroides (Jiypoleucus) re- 

 corded from Tavoy, in this same list. We have not yet ourselves 

 met with it further south than Amherst and Moulmein. Also 

 from Tavoy a specimen of Casarca leucoptera, a bird we have 

 never succeeded in finding at all in Tenasserim, (perhaps we were 

 not then acquainted with its habits of haunting the depths of the 

 forest), but we have since met with it just south of Tenasserim 

 near Kussoom in the Malay Peninsula. 



A. 0. H. 



i^k Jnjluettre 4 Slalnfall m Wit '§x%inMm\ x)| Jltijgra- 



By G. Vidal, Esq., C.S. 



In Vol. VII., the editor has, in an able article, called " Birds 

 of a Drought,''' shown by the exhaustive process, how a large 

 number of species had been banished from a particular tract, 

 (the neighbourhood of Jodhpur) after a season of abnormally 

 light rainfall. In the district from which I write — the South 

 Konkan — a precisely similar result has been observable, as 

 regards migratory shore birds and wild fowl, after a year of 

 exceptionally heavy rainfall. The subject is one of great 

 interest, and I ventilate it in the hope that some one may be 

 able to suggest the true explanation of what at first sight 

 seems a contradiction of nature's laws. 



