OF THE TRAVANCORE HILLS. 373 
it utters both by night and by day. It appears to feed 
principally during the hour after sunrise and before sunset.— 
F. W. B.” 
I follow Mr. Sharpe’s catalogue in classing this bird as a 
Glancidium, but I am not prepared to say that in all cases the 
particular small structural differences on which he founds his 
divisions of genera amongst the owls are those which lead to 
grouping the various species in the most natural manner. Like 
Linnceus’ botanical classification, it immensely facilitates the 
identification of any particular specimen, but it seems to me to 
be in some respects artificial, and I doubt not that he will here- 
after modify it considerably. Of its extreme convenience to 
working field naturalists there can be no two opinions. 
The specimens sent, all belong to the typical malabaricum 
type, with the whole head, neck, upper back, and lesser wing 
coverts, strongly ferruginous. As to the conspicuous difference 
in appearance between typical radiatum and typical malabari- 
cum no one can doubt, but it is rather puzzling to find 
typical radiatum in the very same locality as ‘typical 
malabaricum, and to meet with, both in Southern and Northern 
India, specimens that might be assigned to either species. 
I have never yet seen a thoroughly typical malabaricum 
from Northern India, but at Aujango on the Travancore coast 
between Quilon and Trevandrum where considerable collections 
were made for me, I obtained a typical radiatum, several ty- 
pical ma/abaricum, and a good many more or less intermediate 
forms. I consider malabaricum quite as good a species as a 
vast number that are now-a-days admitted, but my own fixed 
impression is that when ornithology is further advanced, a vast 
number of what are now admitted as species will be degraded 
to sub-species and indicated by trinomial appellations. I 
believe that it would be much better to call these present birds 
Glaucidium radiatum, malabaricum, than to designate them as is 
at present the custom. 
Some of the specimens sent measured in the flesh’: —Length, 8 ; 
expanse, 17°5 to 18; wing, 5; tail, 2°58, 2°62; tarsus, 0:9; 
bill from gape, 0°7. The irides were light yellow. 
81.—Ninox scutellata, Raff 
“Replaces the preceding species above 2,000 feet elevation, 
and frequenting heavy jungle and the borders of clearings, 
where, on bright moonlight nights during the winter months, 
numbers may be heard calling to one another. The call is a 
monotonous double hoot (the first syllable prolonged, the 
second cut short), uttered when the bird is perched on the bough 
of some bare tree ; and I have never heard it cry as described 
