﻿241< W. E. Brooks — Ornithological Notes and Corrections. [No. 4, 



a bath-room in Col. Macdougall's house. The birds went in and out 

 through a broken pane of glass. Other nests were affixed to the underside 

 of the roofs of servants' houses belonging to a house at the south end of 

 Mussoorie. The doors being generally left open, the place just suited the 

 swallows, which were only shut up with their nests at night. The young 

 were hatched in the beginning of July, so that the ^%%^ must have been 

 laid towards the latter part of June. I have, however, seen eggs of this 

 species at Almorah in the end of April. 



Hemichelidon Sibieica, Gmel. 

 S. fuliginosa, Hodg. 



I have referred to this species in J. A. S. B., 1872, p. 75. It is now 

 known by its older term of H. Sihirica, Gmel. I compared my examples 

 with one of Hodgson's in the Indian Museum, and found them identical. 

 Hodgson's dimension (2f in.) for the wing refers to the minimum size ; the 

 range of variation in length of wing is greater than I supposed possible in 

 such a small bird, viz. 2.75 to 3.05 in. What the small species referred to 

 by me in J. A. S. B., 1872, p. 76 was, I have no means of ascertaining. I 

 remember it well, and still have Mr. Hume's letter concerning it, written 

 at the time, when he assured me that Hodgson's species was not the one 

 commonly received as such. 



Alseonax terricolor, Hodgs. and A. latirostris, Raffles. 



Mr. Hume considers these species identical, and in writing of the former 

 always terms it A. latirostris, under which name he has figured it in 

 ' Lahore to Yarkand.' Mr. Swinhoe* identifies Muscicapa cinereoalha, 

 Temm. and Schleg. with Alseonax latirostris, Eaffles. Having examined 

 the Chinese species M. cinereoalha, I find it distinct from A. terricolor^ by 

 its shorter tail and rather differently shaped and somewhat broader and 

 shorter bill, which is also blacker towards the tip than in the other bird. 

 Alseonax latirostris is without doubt one of these two closely allied birds ; 

 and the question is. Which of the two agrees with Raffles's type and descrip- 

 tion ? Mr. Hume appears to think that because A. terricolor, Hodgs. has 

 been procured in the country from which Raffles described his A. latirostris, 

 it is therefore Raffles's species ; but the other bird, which is a common 

 species in China, may also occur in Sumatra in winter. 



I do not know whether Mr. Swinhoe was correct in uniting A. cinereo- 

 alha and A. latirostris, and whether he compared liis examples of the former 

 with the type or not ; and the subject requires thorough investigation, for 

 Mr. Swinhoet speaks of the Chinese bird as being "identical with the 

 Indian species." 



* Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1871, p. 325. f P. Z. S., 1863, p. 288. 



