502 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



met with an owl in the midst of the ocean in 26° N. He does 

 not tell us what species it was.* 



fetters U t\c Cbitor. 



Sir, 



Captain Sedgewick, R.E., has just brought me a 

 couple of skins of Coracias garrula from the Mhairwarra Hills, 

 40 miles south-west of this. There is nothing" astonishing in 

 rinding it so far west ; but Captain Sedgewick writes that 

 " it is the common Roller of the Mhairwarra hills, and that he 

 did not see a single specimen of indica." 



Garrula is doubtless, as you say in Stray Feathers, Vol. I., 

 page 168, a hot- weather visitant ; and its numbers this year 

 are doubtless due to the prolonged and heavy westerly gales we 

 have had this year ; but I will get Captain Sedgewick to look 

 out in the cold weather. 



I believe garrula spends the winter in Arabia. It certainly 

 appears on the north coast of the gulf (where indica is a 

 permanent resident) in March. 



Did I tell you that 1 have Pitta bengalensis, not in Adam's 

 list, from Sambhur ?f 



0. St. John. 

 Mayo College, Ajmere ; 

 S\st August 1877. 



Sir, 



Allow me to offer the following remarks on some of the 

 birds of prey referred to in Stray Feathers, Vol. V., pp. 124, 

 125 and 128. 



The adult birds of Lopliospizias trivirgatus differ from their 

 nearly-allied northern congeners, not only in their smaller size 

 but also in the very bright fulvous or rufescent tints on the 

 upper breast and on the sides of the neck ; which, so far as I 

 have observed, are never so bright or so conspicuous in the 

 adult birds of the northern race (L. rufitinctus of McClel- 

 \and= indicus of Hodgson), as they are in true Southern 

 L. trivirgatus. 



* F peregrinator appears to migrate across the ocean to great distances from 

 India. I possess a specimen which I refer to this species, procured in 1833 on board- 

 ship between the Mauritius and Madagascar. M. Sundevall gives a good figure of 

 the species, and it is also represented under the name of F. sliaheen, by Mr Jerdon, 

 in his Illustrations of Indian Ornithology, plates 12 and 28. — H. E. S. 



t But see, ante III., 470. 



