182 JOURNAL >, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol XI. 



shrinkage would nearly account- for the differences if Hume's skin was 

 quite fresh when measured; and this is what may have been the case, 

 though it is hardly likely,- as the bird was, I believe, collected by Mr. 

 Shillingford in Purneah and sent (a dry specimen) to Mr. Hume. 



Colonel Graham gave the colour of the legs and feet as dirty yellowish, 

 and the bill looked as if it had been " yellow-brownish at the tip and 

 base/' 



Blyth says: " Bill yellow with some lateral black specks, the destrum 

 darker, and the feet appear to have been orange." 



Later on he figures the bird with dingy olive-yellow feet and bill, but 

 the birds from which he copied were, I believe, domesticated ones, and 

 the discrepancy is thus accounted for. 



This is one of the most rare and little known of all our Chenomorphce, 

 and the records regarding its distribution are very limited. I do not 

 consider that Blyth's remarks can really refer to this bird at all, and he 

 must have made a mistake j from what he says one would imagine the 

 White-winged Duck to be a very common species in certain parts of 

 Burma, yet Hume says in " Stray Feathers," Vol. VI, p. 489: " Davison 

 has examined the Valley of the Sittang, the Salween, the Attaran, the 

 Gyn, the Haung-thaw, the Tavoy, and the Tenasserim, but he has»never 

 yet seen or heard of this species. If it does occur in Tenasserim it 

 can only be as an extremely rare straggler." 



As regards Jerdon's letter to Hume, in which he mentions this bird as 

 congregating in large flocks, it is a pity we have not the date of it. In 

 1864, when he finished his third volume of the" Birds of India," he evidently 

 looked on the bird as rare in the extreme ; he talks of its occurring in 

 Dacca and other parts of Eastern Bengal, but does not lead one to infer 

 that it was anything but uncommon even there. If his letter was written 

 prior to 1864, it may be taken for granted that Jerdon had discovered his 

 mistake, whilst, if written after 1864, it shows that Jerdon made a mistake, 

 which, as far as any one knows, has never been rectified. He says, " I 

 have seen several flocks of Casarca leucoptera in the lower parts of the 

 Brahmapootra, where it joins the Ganges, not far from Dacca, where, 

 indeed, Simson had seen it." Ten years more, added to the years when 

 Hume and his collectors knew the country above referred to, has shown 

 that it could not have been the Wood Duck which Jerdon saw in flocks. 

 That Simson saw it in DaGca certainly does not prove that it inhabits 



