280 Mr. E. L. Layard on the 
salt plains of the north, transported to the well-rememhered 
haunts in the lovely “ Lanka” by Captain Legge’s spirited 
narrative. 
So vivid have been my impressions, though some six and 
twenty years have passed since I left its shores and ceased to 
work in its fauna, that the “mysterious chambers of the brain ” 
have given up memories long locked up in them, and incidents 
of collecting, of travelling, of individual specimens even, 
seem to stand forth one by one, like pictures in dissolving 
views, One, as it fades, calling up another. Some of these 
reminiscences may not be useless to the future explorers of 
Ceylonese ornithology ; I therefore jot them down as they 
occur to me. 
Nisaetus fasciatus. The specimen in the Poole Museum 7s 
Dr. Templeton’s specimen! I now remember it perfectly 
well. My dear old friend gave it to me, with a few other 
specimens, when he left the island, and it thus came into the 
Poole collection, never having been replaced by a better. 
My first connexion with the ornithology of Ceylon may 
well be detailed here. 
I arrived in Ceylon in March 1846, and for some time, 
having no employment, amused my leisure in collecting for 
my more than friend, Dr. Templeton, who had nursed me 
through a dangerous illness, and in whom I found a con- 
genial spirit. My chief attraction then was the glorious Le- 
pidoptera of the island; but I always carried a light single- 
barrelled gun in a strap on my back,.to shoot specimens for 
the Doctor.. He himself, like Dr. Kelaart, never shot, but 
depended on his friends for specimens. I, of course, soon 
became interested in the “ornis;” and on Templeton’s 
leaving, at the end of 1847 or beginning of 1848, he begged 
me to take up his correspondence with the late Edward 
Blyth, then curator of the R. A. 8. Calcutta Museum*. 
He left me his list of the species then known to exist in 
the island, numbering 183, and Blyth’s last letter to answer. 
From that day almost monthly letters passed between the 
* All Ceylonese species therefore (except Kelaart’s) described by a 
after this date were discovered by me. 
