NOTES ON SOME OF OUR INDIAN STONE CHATS. 239 



In the second place, this change was not as a protection against 

 the usurpations of the favored elect, who are in a position 

 to sing " 'Tis a glorious charter, deny it, &c, v but against 

 certain outer barbarians who know not Strickland, neither do 

 they regard the British Association. 



Outside the limits of the British Garden of Eden dwell 

 (doubtless wailing and gnashing their teeth) hordes of 

 Zoological bandits, ever on the watch to waylay stray and 

 unprotected species, whom they either murder or else pass off 

 as their own lawful offspring amongst their brother robbers. 



It was against the malevolent machinations of these 

 scientific wehr- wolves that I sought by adding a second name 

 to save my poor little ewe lamb of a species. No true Briton 

 could honestly meddle with nitens, and even the small and 

 evil intentioned remnant of humanity excluded from that 

 dignified and widely embracing designation could scarcely 

 trample on ambiguus. 



Is my frivolous interlocutor satisfied ? If not, let him at least 

 have the grace to be silent (we have heard quite enough of 

 him) and meditate on his own inexpressible stupidity. I have 

 furnished him with the fullest and most soul-convincing reasons, 

 but Providence has, it would really seem, created him as in- 

 capable of assimilating these, as Trilobites were of digesting 

 Roast Pork. 



Uotcs on some of our gnMan j&tone floats. 



There can be no confounding our Indian rubetraoides, 

 Jameson, (=Jamesoni, nobis, in case continental ornithologists 

 refuse to accept Jameson's name,) with the European rubetra, 

 when once a series of the two species have been compared. 



Rubetraoides, (which so far as I know has never yet been 

 described) has a conspicuously longer and somewhat slenderer 

 bill ; has very much more white in the tail and the 2nd 

 primary equal to, or, rarely, a shade longer than the 7 th, 

 while in rubetra the 2nd about equals the 5th. In rubetra 

 the 1st primary is very small, very narrow, and the 2nd very 

 little shorter than the 3rd ; in rubetraoides the 1st primary is 

 much larger, and the 2nd from jth to |rd of an inch shorter 

 than the 3rd. 



I only know of rubetraoides occurring in the Punjaub, and 

 during the cold season. I have never heard of its being seen 

 or obtained east of the Jumna. Even in the Punjaub it is 

 scarce, at least I gather this from the fact that no one but 

 Jameson and myself have apparently ever procured it. 



