144 Memoir of Dr. T. C. Jerdon, by Sir Walter Elliot. 



A considerable force was at that time engaged in quelling 

 disturbances in the Ganjam district, about half-way between 

 Madras and Calcutta. The troops had suffered severely from 

 fever and dysentery in the mountainous tracts to which the 

 insurgents had retired, and a large number of medical 

 officers were attached to the troops in consequence. As soon, 

 therefore, as Jerdon had passed the probationary course in 

 the General Hospital, to which all new comers are subjected, 

 he was despatched to the scene of operations. He had thus 

 an opportunity of seeing a part of the country difficult of 

 access and rarely visited ; and he did not neglect it, as his 

 notices of the birds of the Eastern Ghauts subsequently 

 showed. At the conclusion of the operations in Goomso _>r, 

 he was posted to the 2nd Light Cavalry on the 1st March, 

 1837. He joined the regiment at Trichinopoly, and marched 

 with it to Jamah, in the Dekhan. Cavalry regiments have 

 generally two medical officers attached to them. He was 

 thus enabled to make frequent excursions into different parts 

 of the Table Land, and to accumulate materials for "A 

 Catalogue of the Birds of the Peninsula of India," which 

 appeared in successive numbers of the Madras Journal of 

 Literature and Science, in 1839-40. The preface states that 



" Until a very few years ago, we did not possess a single col- 

 lective account of the birds of this vast country. In 1831, a 

 catalogue of birds collected on the banks of the Ganges and in 

 the Vindhian range of mountains, was published by Major 

 Franklin in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London . 

 This comprised 156 species, of which more than twenty were 



described for the first time In 1832, a catalogue of 



birds collected by Colonel Sykes in the Bombay Presidency was 

 published in the same work. In this are enumerated 236 species. 

 . . . . During the short period I have been in this country, 

 I have been fortunate enough to add a considerable number of 



species to the Indian fauna The total number of 



my catalogue is nearly 390*, which, however, includes ten of 

 those of Sykes not hitherto obtained by me, and nearly as many 

 more obtained by Mr. Walter Elliot, M.C.S , who has kindly 

 placed his valuable notes on the birds procured by him at my 

 disposal; by which, in addition to the new species added, I have 

 been able to elucidate several doubtful points, to add some most 

 interesting information on various birds, and to give the correct 

 native names of most of the species enumerated by him." 

 After passing about four years with his regiment, he 

 * Enlarged to 420 by a supplement. 



