10 ME. E. B. SHAEPE ON TITR 



S.W. Africa. Ondonga, Ovampo Land, Nov. 18G6. 



I cannot help thinking that this is the identical specimen men- 

 tioned by Professor Schlegel (Eevue, Accipitr. p. 140) as Vultur 

 fulvus Jcolhei. When I gave up collecting large African birds in 

 order to restrict myself to Passeres and Picariae, most of the 

 former passed into the hands of Mr. Prank, by whom they were 

 oifered to the Leiden Museum. I may state therefore that 

 the bird in question was examined botb by Mr. Gurney and 

 myself, and identified as G. riceppelli, which, as I have observed 

 in my ' Catalogue,' wlien adult, is unmistakable, but when young 

 more nearly resembles the other Griffons. 



G. Gyps tndictts. (Map IV.) 



G. iNDicus {Scop.y, Sharpe, Cat. B. i. p. 10. 



Hab. All over India, more rare towards the south, and then chiefly near 

 mountains; not rare on the Neilgherries, where it breeds (Jerdon). Kat- 

 tiawar {Lloyd) ; breeds at the Taragurh Hill near Ajmere, and in the Gai- 

 mookh clitFs on Mount Aboo (Hume) ; very common near the Sambhur 

 Lake (Adam) ; common in Oudh and Kumaon {Irby) ; Nepal {Hodgson); 

 Deccan (Sykes) ; probably occurs in the Wardha valley (Blanford) ; 

 Assensole, Chota Nagpur district (Brooks) ; breeds near Calcutta (Blyth); 

 very abundant in Burmah (Jerdon); Arakan (Blyth) ; Zwagaben Moun- 

 tains (Beavan); nowhere in great numbers in Upper Pegu, but is not un- 

 common near villages (Oates); Siam (ScJiomburgk); an adult and a nest- 

 ling procured by Mouhot in Siam, 200 miles N.E. of Bangkok, in the Nor- 

 wich Museum (Gurney, Cat. Rapt. B. Norw. Mus. p. 74) ; Malayan penin- 

 sula : " I have seen two specimens of this Vulture in a Malacca collection. 

 No doubt a Vulture of any kind is there rare, or it would not have been 

 deemed worthy of preservation ; according to Sir Stan^ford Raffles, Vul- 

 tures are rare on the west coast of Sumatra, but are occasionally seen on 

 the Malayan peninsula and at Penang " (Tr. Linn. Soc. xiii. p. 277; 

 Blyth, B. Burma, p. 64). 



Mr. Hume believes that two distinct birds are generally com- 

 prised under the name of G. indicus, and he has named one of 

 them O. pallescens. Captain Butler says that the Long-billed 

 Brown Vulture is very common near Mount Aboo and in Northern 

 Guzerat ; and Mr. Hume states that the bird from these parts is 

 the pale cliff-breeding O. pallescens, and not the so-called G. in- 

 dicus of Scopoli, " so common in the eastern portions of our 

 empire." He states that he has received it from Jodhpoor, Cutch, 

 and Kattiawar, but not Scindh as yet. 



