on the Burmese Collared Turtle-Dove. 325


Nimbu and Mague. ‘ The colour generally is darker and more

vivid than in Indian specimens of the species, and the collar is

larger and more crescentic than in ordinary T. risorms (= T.

decaocta douraca), and if Jerdon’s measurements are founded on

fresh specimens, this bird is decidedly larger. He gives 13

inches as the extreme length, but my specimen measures 14

inches, its wing 7 inches and its tail 6.’ So that in its large size

and broader collar the Burmese bird would seem to approach the

typical form nearer than the Indian bird. The bird from China

and Japan should be compared with Burmese specimens, for

Swiuhoe writes in P.Z.S. for 1870, p. 446, 011 a bird from China in

the neighbourhood of the Great Wall ‘ its eyelid is pale yellow.’


It should be borne in mind that several of the Doves ot

Burma are replaced by a slightly different race or nearly allied

species in India, Crocopus viridifrons , the Burmese yellow-fronted

Green Pigeon is replaced in North and South India respectively

by the allied forms C. phcenicopterus and C. chlorogaster; Turtur

humilis with its lead grey under wing-coverts is replaced in India

by the closely allied T. tranquebaricus with light grey under

wing-coverts, and Burma has T. tigriuus, the Malayan Spotted

Turtle-dove which has grey eyelids ; while India has T. sura-

tensis, the pretty Indian Spotted Turtle, which has red eyelids.


To return once more to the Barbary Dove, there can be

110 longer any doubt that it is derived from the pretty little Rose-

grey Turtle-dove (T. roseogriseus) of N.E. Africa, as our esteemed

member Captain Shelley first pointed out more than twenty years

ago. I have looked through the series of skins of this bird at

the British Museum, and was struck with its close resemblance

to the tame bird, which is merely a coarse bleached Rose-grey

Turtle, having waxed fat through many generations of caged life

and having lost the beautiful pink gloss which adorns the wild bird.

It may be asked how comes it that we have a bird which has most

certainly been domesticated from a very remote period derived

from a bird which inhabits the district lying W. of the Red Sea,

and not from the bird which is found in India, when the ancient

civilization of the inhabitants would lead us to expect to find a

domesticated bird ? I have heard it suggested that this was the

bird which was used by the Israelites for their sacrifices, when



