940 2EGIALITIS GEOFFKOY1. 



This example, shot ou the 30th May, is not in perfect plumage ; there are traces of a black band connecting tin- 

 base of the bill with the incomplete band across the forehead, and these, when fully developed, would leave an 

 isolated white spot above the lores. Mr. Hume has obtained it far advanced in breeding-plumage at Kurrachee 

 as early as the I'nd February. 



Female (Syria: May 16, 1877). Has the white throat, rufous chest, and hind neck of the male, but wants the black 

 markings of the face and forehead, the lores and face being mingled rufous and brown, and the forehead above 

 the lores white, the centre part in continuation of the culmen being brownish ; the region above the eye is tinged 

 with rufous as in the male. 



Young. Birds of the vear have but little white on the forehead ; the entire lores and a band nearly across the chest 

 are brown, and the margins of the upper-surface feathers slightly fulvous ; there is also a fulvous patch on the 

 sides of the chest. 



06s. A number of specimens which I have examined from Asia Minor in breeding-plumage correspond in all respects 

 with the above descriptions. There is but little variation on either the bill or wing, and the pale rufous of the 

 chest is much the same in extent and hue in old specimens. 



-\ species somewhat allied to the present is -E. pladda, Gray, procured by Jerdon in Burmah, inhabiting China, where 

 it is the -E. hartingi of Swiuhoe, and figured as such in the Proc. Zool. Soc. 1870, pi. 12. It has all the quill-shafts 

 brown, and no white patch on the outer webs of the shorter primaries, but the tips are margined outwardly with 

 white; the outer tail-feathers have a white tip and a subterminal brown bar, somewhat similar to the coloration in 

 the Common Dotterel (Eudromias morinellus). The measurements, according to Mr. Hume, are — wing 5-7 inches. 

 tarsus 1-35, bill at front 0-S2. This species may perhaps occur as a straggler in Ceylon ; it has, however, only 

 once been obtained in India. 



Distribution. — This fine Sand-Plover, though not so common as the next species, is nevertheless tolerably 

 frequent in Ceylon. Layard may or may not have met with it ; for in his catalogue he only enumerates one 

 species of littoral Sand-Plover, which he styles Hiaticula leschenaulti, and which, as he informs me, in common 

 with all the birds in his list, was identified by Blyth. This title was applied by Blyth to the present species 

 (' Ibis,' 1867, p. 16-1), as can be plainly seen by his saying that the Charadrius asiaticus of Horsfield and Mr. 

 Tristram was the same as JEgialitis leschenaulti, which statement fixes the bird as /E. geojf'royi. In his cata- 

 logue, dated 1849, of the birds in the Asiatic Society's museum, however, he used the correct title for the Large 

 Sa ud- Plover. Against the inference that Layard's birds were really the Large Sand-Plover, we must place 

 the fact that the species which would be thereby excluded from his list is by far the most abundant ; and there- 

 fore the point must always remain a moot one, as there are no specimens of either species at present in the 

 Poole collection. 



I first procured this Plover on the 4th of January, 1873, at the Kumburuputty salt lagoon, in the 

 Trincomalie district; and my attention having been once drawn to it, I found it not uncommon*, frequenting 

 other salt lakes near the sea in twos and threes, or affecting the sea-shore itself, particularly near the mouths 

 of rivers. In the hot season (July) of the same year I met with it in small flocks on the sea-beach near 

 Hambantota, and more particularly saw it in the hollows of the great sand hills near that place ; these were 

 immature or non-breeding individuals, or they would not have been in Ceylon at that period. I unfortvmatelj 

 did not shoot any until the last day I was in the district, and then only got one specimen, which was a yearling 

 bird ; others may have been in partial summer dress, as I procured specimens of the next species in that stage, 

 though they were evidently barren birds. On the north-west coast I have only seen a few birds of this species. 

 I have no particular note of the dates of its arrival and departure ; but they must correspond with other shore- 

 birds. I met with several individuals, evidently new arrivals, on flooded lands south of the Virgel, as early 

 as the 13th of October. 



In India it has chiefly been noticed on the north-west and north-east coasts. Jerdon remarks that he 

 procured it at "Madras and elsewhere, but never far inland;" and Mr. Ball shot it at the mouth of the 



* Subsequent to the publication of my paper in 'The Ibis,' 1875. 



