520 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 
SIR, 
I HAVE just, for the first time, been looking at 
Vol. I of your book about the “ Game Birds of India, &c.,” and 
I think I have made a discovery. 
In the beginning of 1881 I shot a Sandgrouse which was 
different from any I had seen before. The male was some- 
thing like the Painted Grouse, but of much more sober coloring. 
The female was very finely and closely barred. I have hardly 
any doubt that the birds were the Close-barred Sandgrouse. 
Looking up my diary I find that the date on which I shot 
them was the 3rd February, 1881. The place was Damokur 
in the Soane Valley in Rewah, 18 miles from Chundea, which 
is some 20 miles south of the station of Kutni on the E. I. 
Railway. 
My camp was ina stubble field on a hillock with thin 
jungle all round, and I found the birds close to my tents. 
There were two or three parties of five or sixin each. They had 
a whistling cry, laid pretty close, and did not fly far. 1 shot 
four birds of which I think only one was a male. The 
plumage of the female struck me very much. It was so 
very soft and pencilled. Itis a long time ago and I write 
from memory, but I am convinced the bird was the Close-bar- 
red Sandgrouse. Iam keen about birds, though I have no 
scientific knowledge, and whenever I finda bird I don’t know 
I look him up on the first opportunity. 
The place is very wild and unfrequented ; and there is 
far more jungle than cultivation for miles around. 
J. C. BERKELEY. 
Morar, 20th May, 1883. 
[insert this letter because Colonel Berkeley I know was always a keen 
observer of birds, but [ have no other record of the occurrence of this species, 
eastwards of Sind.—ED., S. F.] 
SIR, 
On the 28th November, 1882, at a small jhil near the 
Mala Swamp (about 43 miles south of Gujrowla. in Philibhit, 
one of the officers of my regiment and myself were out shoot- 
ing duck and teal. 
He got first shot at a flock of teal and knocked over some 
six or seven in his first shot or two. They fell near my side, 
and as I had a dog I went in to retrieve them. They were 
pretty well scattered, and he and I both saw one (as we 
thought) of the wounded swimming about near the edge of the 
open bit of water in thecentre. He asked me to get it, but as 
the water was deep there I shot it on the water, and my dog 
retrieved it. I was struck by its peculiar appearance. We both 
