STRAY FEATHERS. 
Vol. IV.] JANUARY, 1876. (Nos. 1, 2 & 3. 
Hotes on the Abitauna of SHount Aboo and Horthern Guserat. 
By Captain E. A. Burier, H. M.’s 83rp ReGiMent. 
( Continued from page 500, No. 6.) 
765 bis.—Spizalauda simillima, Hume. J. A.S.B.,, 
1870, p. 120. 
The Northern Crown-crest Lark is not very common, tut 
occurs sparingly in most localities, affecting grass land and 
cultivated ground. 
[This species is more or less common throughout the entire 
region, except Sindh, where it has not yet been procured. 
Altho’ it possibly occurs there I have seen no specimen yet 
from Aboo itself. 
This is the smaller of the two very distinct species of this 
genus, characterized by the pointed crest and comparatively short 
hind claw, which we have in India. The larger form common 
about Ahmednugger and other places in the Dekhan, on the Nil- 
ghiris and the Malabar coast, is clearly, I think, Scopoli’s Alauda 
malabarica, and as it is the lark of this species in the region 
worked by Col. Sykes, I believe it to be his S. deva, but this must 
be tested by an examination of his types. The smaller species I 
named S. simillima. 
When first discriminating this species [I had nota sufficient 
number of specimens at hand todo full justice to the difference 
in the dimensions of the two species. In S. malabarica the 
wing varies from 3°6 to 4, in adults. The bird, of which I 
am made in the J. A. S. B. to record the wing as 3°57, has 
really the wing 3:7, 1 cannot tell whether the mistake is mine 
or the printers. In S. simil/ima, the wing varies in adults from 
3 to 3°3, in only one out of eighteen now before me does it 
-reach 34, There is a nearly equally conspicuous difference in 
the size of the bill, and besides the usually paler and less 
rufous character of the upper plumage of simillima, I may 
note that whereas the breast spots of malabarica are large and 
conspicuous, those of simillima are small, and less conspicuous, 
and in some birds are almost entirely wanting.—A. O. H.] 
