AND NOTES ON VARIOUS SPECIES FOUND THERE. 197 



him as he shot past, and hence his disappearence from my side 

 of the island. 



A long yarn this, over the shooting of a Falcon, but I 

 must be forgiven, as this is the second authenticated instance 

 of a Shahin being procured in Ceylon. Layard's bird was the 

 first. My specimen is a female in, what must be, nearly the 

 fully adult plumage. Dimensions: length, 16'75; wing, 12*8; 

 tail, 6'5 ; tarsus, 2 ; mid toe, 2*15 ; its claw, 082 ; bill, from 

 gape to tip straight, 1"15 ; expanse, 38*1. 



Iris umber brown ; bill dark slate blue, changing to greenish 

 at the edge of the cere, which, with the gape and base of under- 

 mandible, is chrome yellow ; tarsi and feet gamboge yellow. 

 The head, hind neck, and cheek-patch are almost black ; back 

 and scapidars dark slate with darker mesial lines, while the 

 wing-coverts are margined only with the slaty hue ; the lower 

 back gradually pales into fine bluish grey, handsomely barred 

 in the centre of the upper tail-covert feathers with blackish ; 

 the tail is broadly tipped with buff; the throat and chin almost 

 pure white gradually changing from the rufous white of the 

 chest to the uniform rufous of the breast and belly. The only 

 markings beneath consist of a few bars on the lower flanks and 

 under tail-coverts. 



The pale rump is very conspicuous in this bird when on the 

 wing. 



What are the relative powers of flight of this species and the 

 Peregrine as observed in India ? I witnessed, on the 12th of this 

 month, a remarkable capture of a Palm Swift by the former bird. 

 On the shore of Fort Frederick stands a solitary Polungra Palm, 

 in which a little colony of C. palmarum breed every year. I 

 was about to ascend the tree to look at the nests, and was 

 watching the little troop of Swifts circling round me, when a 

 Shahin Avhich has been about the cliff for the last fortnight 

 dashed past me and gradually mounting higher and higher went 

 away with a twisting flight for about 300 }'ards at a tremendous 

 pace ; I could not see, at this moment, what he was pursuing, 

 as it was just getting dusk, but he suddenly checked himself and 

 shot down with meteoric swiftness almost into the sea. I per- 

 ceived a poor little Swift just in front of him ; close to the surface 

 of the water, it dashed along in a horizontal direction for about 

 100 yards, closely pursued by the Falcon, and then twisted 

 hither and thither for the space of a few seconds, the Shahin 

 following its every movement until he struck it with his talons, 

 and seizing it in his bill flew past me to the cliff. The whole 

 chase did not last more than a minute, and though I pitied the 

 poor little Cypselus, with its young clinging to the palmyra leaf 

 above me, I returned home with the impression that to a 

 naturalist a finer sight could not have presented itself. 



