44 Monograph of the Oranes. 



[Mr. H. Seebohm, in his Notes on the Ornithology of Siberia {Ihis, 

 1879, p. 149), writes, " A small flock of four or five of these handsome birds 

 flew leisurely over our steamer as we were threading the labyrinths of the 

 Too'-ra. During flight they appeared to be pure white all over, except the 

 outside half of each wing, which looked jet-black.] 



Its nest is made among almost inaccessible reeds, with layers of plants. 

 The eggs are two in number, grey, streaked with numerous dusky lines. 

 This bird winters usually about the Caspian Sea, and is observed to migrate 

 in spring northward, along the course of the Volga, always in pairs. 

 Nordmann also remarks that it is common south of the Volga, and on the 

 western shores of the Caspian Sea. He also states that two individuals 

 were seen by Pallas in April in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg. In 

 " A List of the Birds observed to winter in Macedonia," by Col. Drummond 

 Hay (then Captain H. M. Drummond), published in the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History, vol. xviii. (1846), pp. 10 et seqq., that observer remarks 

 that "a large flock of these very rare birds [i.e., as occurring in Europe] 

 were seen on January 9 ; when on the wing they made a hissing noise ; I, 

 unfortunately, was unable to obtain a specimen." Sir Alexander Burns 

 procured examples in Afghanistan, and excellent figures of those specimens, 

 drawn under his superintendence, are now in the library of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. Major L. Howard Irby, in some "Notes on Birds 

 observed in Oudh and Kumaon," published in the Ibis for 1861, states that, 

 " Though I never succeeded in obtaining a specimen of this crane, I saw it 

 on four different occasions : at Sander in February, and at Hilgee on the 

 river Choka, in December, 1859. The first time there were three together, 

 two white and one dusky coloured (the colour of an immature hooper swan) 

 — ^no doubt the two old birds and their young. I tried to get a shot at 

 them in vain, they were so excessively wild, which is not the case with the 

 Saras ; though the Common and Demoiselle Cranes are in India very 

 difficult to approach, the only way of shooting them being with a rifle." 

 According to Pere David this species breeds in the province of Leautung, 

 or Leaotong, which lies immediately north of the Yellow Sea, and borders 

 on the Corea to the east and south-east of it. 



[I may add that, in addition to the plates already mentioned, the species 

 is figured by Temminck, pi. col. 467, and the young in Fauna Japonica, 

 pi. 73. A head drawn from a living specimen in the Zoological Gardens is 

 now given in plate 1, fig. 2.j 



In the next three species there is a bald and smooth greyish pileua or 

 coronal shield, which contrasts abruptly with the red and papillose skin of 

 the occiput, and the tertiaries are curved and but slightly elongated, the 



