MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 324 
species which were (I believe) previously unknown, A very interesting and 
rare bird frequents the sand-hills near Clifton, Alemon desertorum, or the 
desert lark, usually only found in the wildest and most desolate tracts, a large 
lark that most people would take for a plover, showing a white bar on its wing 
when it rises, The very curious crab plover (Dromas ardeola) is found in the 
harbour, In the cold weather many a treasure is lost by its being unrecog- 
nised, or for want of some one to prepare the skins, A friend at Sukkur 
last year shot the very rare Anser erythropus, the white-fronted goose, and— 
ate it. Mr, Hume recorded three geese and fourteen ducks from Sind, but many 
have been added since, Mr, Watson, the present Collector of Hyderabad, obtain- 
ed three wild swans in 1878, the first adults of Cygnus olor killedin India, That 
rare duck, the Smew, with pointed bill and rows of teeth, is more commonly 
obtained in Sind than anywhere else in India. On the Manchar Lake you 
obtain the great Sheldrake of Hurope. Mr. Hume was the first to note the 
marbled teal as an Indian bird, It is common in Central Sind, I added the 
larger whistling teal myself to the list, and my friend Mr, Hoare has recognised 
the very rare scaup duck in the Delta, Sir Oliver St. John killed the stiff- 
tailed duck in Kandahar, so it probably strays into Sind, Colonel Augustus 
LeMessurier certainly killed one very rare duck, the lovely clucking teal, in 
Sind, The common and jack snipe are common here, but the pin-tail snipe 
is very rare, Isaw three and shot one specimen last year, and only one, I think, 
had been shot in Sind before. Singularly enough, my shikari recognised it on 
the wing as different from the common snipe, which, however, it too greatly 
resembles for an ordinary sportsman to discriminate it, In Sind we find six 
of the eight sand grouse met with in India, including the three rare ones 
I mentioned and of which I have brought you specimens. And we are rich 
in other game birds also, We have three bustards—the great bustard in the 
desert, the ruffed bustard or talore, and the ‘leek’ or lesser floriken, which is 
to be found at Gadap or even on the Moach plain. Colonel Wise and Mr. 
Mulock once made a bag of 15 on the Hubb, We have the francolin or black 
partridge in abundance, the common grey, the little secsee which gets up in 
covies with a whirr, and the chukore is found on Daryaru. As for plovers, 
curlews, and the like, their name is legion, The raptorial birds, which I should 
have mentioned first, are very numerous, including the great lammergayer 
and rare hawks, such as Falco babilonicus, Out at the Hubb you get the rare 
Desert or Trumpeter bulfinch, and we have a bulbul, the white-eared, peculiar 
to Sind and the Punjab, though it travels as far as Gujerat sometimes, The 
greatest find ever made was, perhaps, by Mr. W. T. Blanford, who procured a 
very rare African bird, Hypocolius ampelinus, on the Kirthar range, 
In the highly important department of Mammals again there is work to be 
done in Sind, The Mamh, an almost mythical animal when I was first in Sind, 
has, it is true, been captured, and to our disappointment identified as a small 
variety of the ordinary Himalayan black bear. But Mr, Murray, I believe, 
