292 NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXIII. 1916. 



of Boys' specimens. The whole collection, however, was made in India, and I have 

 seen no other specimen which gave any indication of having been taken elsewhere 

 than in India." 



Captain Boys collected in India. His name is mentioned as donor of specimens 

 to the Museum of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, in Blyth's catalogue of the Birds 

 in that collection of 1849, on pp. 29, 135, 152, 164, 167, 209, 249. The specimens 

 which he collected were, according to Blyth's catalogue, from Sindh, Ferozepore, 

 Ludiana, the N.W. Provinces. It was Captain Boys, after whom was named the 

 Crested Lark of N.W. India, in the somewhat extravagant combination Certhilauda 

 Boysii, by Blyth, Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, xv. p. 41 (1846). This form of Galerida 

 is now called Galerida cristata chendoola (Frank!.), as it was named Alauda 

 chendoola by Franklin in 1831. 



Cases have often been considered of the origin of specimens in collections 

 supposed or asserted to have come from a certain locality. I believe such specimens 

 have, as a rule, not been admitted to the Hand-List of Brit. Birds, or into other 

 lists, and, in my opinion, they cannot be admitted to have come from any definite 

 locality unless they are fully labelled, with sufficient data. Not only is it always 

 possible that a single specimen might have been given or sent by a friend to a 

 collector, who only collected the birds of his country, and who kept this particular 

 specimen because it interested him, or for sentimental reasons ; but it is also pos- 

 sible, and it has happened hundreds of times, that a wrong label was placed on a 

 specimen in the museum. Therefore it is, in my opinion, impossible to accept as 

 evidence of the occurrence of Arenaria melanocephala in " India " the specimen 

 now in the Boys' collection, merely because the latter was supposed, and seemed, to 

 consist only of Indian birds. 



