A NOTE ON BIRDS FROM CENTRAL INDIA. 18P 



collections : thns all Hodgson's collections, even marine fish, are la- 

 belled " Nepal," and Jerdon's and Elliot's specimens from the Sonth 

 Mahratta Country, the Niligiris, Malabar, and Travancore are all 

 labelled ''Madras" in the British Museum, so the circumstance 

 of a specimen being labelled Bombay in that collection proves 

 nothing. 



There is another name in Mr. Barnes' work that might, I think, 

 have been omitted with advantage. Cercomela melanura was included 

 in Jerdon's " Birds of India " on very slender evidence. Blyth (J. A. 

 S. B., XVI, p. 1 31) observed (i amongst Barnes' drawings there is a 

 rude figure of what is probably Sax. melanura, Tern." Now, the draw- 

 ings obtained by Sir A. Barnes in Sind and Afghanistan were very far 

 indeed from being good, they were in fact indifferent figures by, I 

 believe, very second-rate native artists. Hume (" Stray Feathers, VoL 

 I, p. 188") showed how probable it was that a bad figure of a Saxicola 

 had been identified by Blyth with C. melanura. I know the latter bird 

 well and have seen and shot it repeatedly on the Abyssinian coast-land 

 and at Aden, and I certainly never saw it in Baluchistan nor in Sind, 

 where I passed three cold seasons in traversing the province. It is a 

 conspicuous bird for its size, and easy of recognition. None of the 

 ornithologists who have collected in Sind — Hume, Butler, Doig, James, 

 Murray, Le Mesurier, and others — has ever met with the species. 

 But in the last number of " The Ibis," Lieut. Cordeaux relates how 

 he saw a bird in Kashmir that corresponded exactly with Jerdon's 

 description. Of course, the bird was not secured, and it is unnecessary 

 to say that it is far less probable that C. melanura should be found in 

 Kashmir than in Sind. 



