ORB. IJVSESSOJRJES. 



FAM. MOTACILLINM. 



GEN. ANTHUS. 



PLATE XLV. 



ANTHUS SIMILIS—JERDON. 



MOUNTAIN TITLARK. 



The group of Larks, and Titlarks, is one of the most difficult to define of 

 all the feathered tribes, their plumage being in general so extremely similar, that 

 without accurate measurements and comparisons of allied species, numerous mistakes 

 are unavoidable. Mr. Blyth has lately, in one of his excellent papers in the Journal 

 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, revised all the Indian species ; and Mr. Gray, in his 

 list of Hodgson's birds, has also enumerated several. The subject of our present article 

 is certainly one of the rarest of all. It is not enumerated among Hodgson's birds, 

 but I see that Lord A. Hay has lately obtained it at Jummoo in the North West 

 Himalayas. My first specimens were procured at Jalna, in the neighbourhood of low 

 hills on a bare plain. I have since, on several occasions, seen it on the Segoor Pass 

 of the Neelgherries, among rocky ground about 4,000 feet high, and have little doubt 

 that it will eventually be found to frequent rocky hills throughout the table land of 

 India. I presume that it is a resident here, for I lately procured a specimen in what 

 is evidently its nestling plumage on the Segoor Ghat. 



Description.— Plumage above generally of a dusky olive brown, the feathers 

 edged with pale ferruginous, darkest on the margins of the wing feathers; beneath, 

 and superciliary stripe also pale ferruginous, streaked on the neck and breast with 

 brown; outermost tail-feather with the outer web and tip rusty white, and the next 

 tipped with the same only. Irides brown. 



Length 8 inches — wing S^ths — tail 3|— tarsus rather more than an inch— bill 

 tP forehead j^jths— hind claw nearly iV*^^s. 



