112 <A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF GILGIT. 
73.—Pratincola robusta, Zvristram apud Marshall, 
Ibis, 1881, p. 55, nec Tristram, (483.) 
Pratincola robusta cannot be included in the list of Gilgit 
birds. Canon Tristram’s type of that species, from Mysore 
in the south of India, has recently been shown (Stray 
Fratuers, [X., p. 133, 1880) to be quite distinct from the birds 
referred to by Captain Marshall under that name. The form 
mentioned by Captain Marshall would, if distinct from 
P. maura, require a new name; but with a large series of these 
birds from Gilgit, and after examining the specimens in 
Mr. Seebohm’s collection and in the British Museum, I cannot 
agree that the proportional length of the tail or any of the 
other points brought forward will justify the splitting of 
Pratincola maura into two species. 
74.—Saxicola opistholeuca,* Stricki. (488.) 
This species is rare in Gilgit, and perhaps only occurs there 
on passage to Turkestan, whence Severtzoff records it, under 
the name of S. syenitica, as breeding. According to my 
observations it appears in Gilgit, in small numbers, in April 
and May on its way north, and passes southwards again late 
in autumn. I have the following notes of a bird of this 
species shot in Gilgit on the 23rd December :—Length, 65 
inches ; wing, 3°7 ; tail, 2°9; tarsus, 0°95 ; bill from gape, 0°85. 
Bill, feet, and claws black; gape yellow; iris brown; the head 
and nape ashy, forming an ill-defined cap. The young bird 
described by Major Biddulph is possibly the young of Saxicola 
mori. 
75.—Saxicola picata, Blyth. (489.) 
Saxicola capistrata, Gould. 
A summer visitor to Gilgit, and exceedingly common from 
the middle of March to the middle of September. Of fifty 
specimens in my collection, thirty are males, and these show 
every possible gradation between the form with the greyish- 
white cap (capistrata) and the one having the whole head 
pure black (picata); it is quite impossible to separate my 
series into two species. I have observed and shot examples 
with the white cap throughout the breeding-season in com- 
pany with brown females quite undistinguishable from those 
of picata, so that the females of both forms are certainly 
alike. With reference to Major Biddulph’s remarks on this 
* Throughout I have allowed the specific names to stand in the feminine, but 
saxicola, framed on the model of agricola, ought, I think, to be treated as mas- 
culine.—ED., 8, F. 
