166 WHITE-TAILED PLOVER. 



frequent visits to tlie game stalls in tlie Malta market, my attention 

 •was struck by a strange-looking bird, wbich was offered me for sale 

 as a Cream-coloured Courser — a somewhat rare visitor, but of which 

 I had picked up in the course of several years from the same stall 

 one or two specimens, and a few others from other sources. This it 

 certainly was not. On consulting such books as I had at hand I 

 could find nothing answering to it in Bree's ^' Birds of Europe," 

 or Degland's '' Ornithologie Europeenne," and being sure it did not 

 belong to any species hitherto observed in England, I was altogether 

 at a loss to know what it was. The short description in the "Ibis" 

 for 1859, (pp. 52-53,) of Vanellus leucurus, given by Mr. E. C. Taylor 

 in his "Ornithological Reminiscences of Egypt," to which I subsequently 

 referred, was sufficient to satisfy me that I was in possession of one 

 of those birds so rare in European collections that Mr. Taylor observes 

 there is but one unnamed footless specimen in the British Museum; 

 and in the Paris Museum at the Jar din des Plantes he could not find 

 it at all. It was, he adds, perhaps the rarest species which he and his 

 party met with in Egypt, though in an extensive tract of marshy country, 

 a few miles south-west of Thebes, it was abundant, and several were 

 shot. In confirmation of this I am told that a gentleman who returned 

 to Egypt this winter, met with a good many near Thebes during his 

 visit last year." 



In the "Richesses Ornithologiques du Midi de la France" of MM. 

 Jaubert and Barthelemy-Lapommeraye, p. 452, is an account of the 

 capture of a second specimen at Montpellier. This specimen is in 

 the collection of M. Doumet at Cette. 



According to Von Heuglin, it is only a passenger through North- 

 east Africa and Central and Southern India. 



The following I extract from Jerdon's "Birds of India:" — "The 

 White-tailed Lapwing is a rare bird in India. I procured it only 

 once, on the margin of the large lake at Bhojjal, in Central India, 

 in December, where it occurred in small flocks. My attention was 

 first called to it by its peculiar cry. Blyth procured one specimen 

 from the Calcutta Bazaar; it was once procured in the Dehra Doon, 

 and no other record of its occurrence in India is noted. It is how- 

 ever stated not to be rare in Affghanistan, where it is called Chiric. 

 Out of India it is chiefly known as an inhabitant of Northern Africa, 

 and it is said to be abundant in marshes near Thebes. At the time 

 that Canon Tristram published his account of its occurrence there, it 

 was stated by him to be rare in European Museums; only one bad 

 specimen existing in the British Museum, and none in that of Paris." 



Not much is known about its nidification, but I learn from Mr. 



