SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 



OP 



THE SECOND YARKAND MISSION. 



AVES. 



By R. BOWELEE SHAEPE, E.L.S., P.Z.S., &c., 



ZOOLOGICAL DEPAETMENT, BKTTISH MUSEUM. 



IT is mucli to be regretted that by a series of untoward circumstances this report on the 

 ornithological collections formed by the late Dr. Ferdinand Stoliczka has been so long 

 delayed. The work would have been done by my friend Mr. Allan Hume, and indeed was 

 done by him, but during the rebuilding of a portion of his museum at Simla the whole of 

 the MSS., together with other valuable MSS. work of Mr. Hume's, was stolen by a dishonest 

 servant and sold as waste-paper in the bazaar. I therefore brought the collection over with 

 me to England with the rest of the Hume Collection, and but for an unwonted pressure of 

 official work which has fallen to my lot ever since my return from India, I should have 

 completed this report long ago. 



By this delay a great injustice has been unavoidably done to the memory of that sterling 

 naturalist Dr. Stoliczka, for the material which he collected was abundant and the series of 

 skins ample. Had he lived to write up his own notes, it is certain that this report would 

 have been one of the most interesting ever published on the birds of Central Asia, but I have 

 done my best to extract from his diary all the notes which appear to me to be of interest to 

 ornithologists. I have gone further in my endeavour to make the present report as useful as 

 possible after the lapse of years which has ensued, and I have included in the list of birds all 

 the species that were obtained by Dr. Henderson and Dr. Scully and recorded in the notes 

 published by those gentlemen. Colonel Biddulph, who was attached to the same expedition 

 as Stoliczka, gave a series of notes in MSS. to Mr. Hume, and these, having luckily escaped 

 the fate which overwhelmed the rest of the MSS., have been incorporated here. The present 

 work, therefore, is an attempt to monograph the labours of the English Expeditions into 



