ISO A FIRST LIST OF THE 



Mr. Harting took mercy on the ornithological world generally 

 and worked out the synonymy of the little wretches. The 

 species sent from Thayetmyo is the one designated by Jerdon 

 minutus, Pallas, a diminutive race of the species which he calls 

 philippensis of Scop., but which Mr. Blyth says is curonicns, 

 Besck., which latter Mr. Gray says is a synonym of fluviatilis, 

 Bechst. I call the present species j)Mlijopmus } because Mr. Gray 

 makes minutus, Pallas, a synonyme of this, but whether there are 

 really two or ten of these nearly allied races, or by what names 

 the two or the ten should properly stand, it is simply impossi- 

 ble to decide. 



Of this present species, minutus, Pall, apud Jerdon, Mr. Oates 

 remarks : " This is a common bird all through the cold-season, 

 being found chiefly on the sand-banks of the Irrawaddy and 

 large nullahs. It must, I think, breed with us, but I have not 

 noticed it at all during the rains. 



" A female measured : Length, 6 - 25 ; expanse, 13*1 ; tail, from 

 vent, 2'2; wing, 4'2 ; bill, from gape, 0'55; tarsus, barely 1*0. 



" The bill was black; the gape and base of lower mandible, pale 

 yellow ; the eyelids, grey ; their edges, tumid and bright yellow ; 

 irides, dark brown; legs and feet, dusky brownish yellow, darker 

 on the toes and bare portion of tibia ; claws, dark horny ." 



This bird will not do ior philippinus, apud Blyth (Ibis, 1867, 

 p. 164) which, he says, has a tarsus 1*12 in length, and the tail 

 unhanded, with the outermost three feathers white ; all the tail 

 feathers have a black band ; the two outermost feathers on either 

 side, white, with the band on the inner webs only ; the next three 

 pairs, pale olive brown, white-tipped, with a dark band, and the 

 central tail feathers similar, but without the white tip. Then, 

 again, philippinus has the crown, according to Blyth, rufescent 

 brown, with a more rufous periphery, some black behind the 

 white nuchal collar above, and the pectoral streak narrow or 

 interrupted in front ; but there is no rufous at all upon the head of 

 our small Plover, and the pectoral streak, as he calls it, is a broad 

 and perfectly continuous band ; in fact, the bird is, as far as 

 I can tell, in every respect a perfect miniature of our Common 

 Indian-ringed Plover, fluviatilis, coronicus, or whatever its proper 

 name may be, which is found everywhere up the Persian Gulf, 

 all over India, and also at the Andamans, and what increases the 

 difficulty is that between the two races intermediate-sized links 

 appear to occur. 



854.— Chettusia cinerea, Blyth; C. inornata, Schl. 



Mr. Gray assigns cinerea, Blyth, to Bengal and inornata to 

 Japan. I have seen no Japanese specimen, but from the plate and 

 description in the Fauna Japonica, our Bengal bird would seem to 



