268 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



II.— LIST OF THE BIKDS OF SUMATEA. 



" The first systematic account of the avi-fauna of Sumatra " (I quote 

 from the late Lord Tweeddale's valuable paper, On a collection of birds 

 made in the Lampongs in 1876 by Mr. E. C. Buxton, in the Jbis for 1877, 

 page 283) "-was written by Sir Stamford Eaffles at Fort Marlborough, 

 near Bencoolen. . . Most of the birds enumerated were obtained in the 

 vicinity of Bencoolen itself, or during short trips into the interior of 

 the district of that name, during the years 1819 and 1820, partly by 

 Sir Stamford, assisted by Dr. Joseph Arnold, and partly by Messrs. 

 Diard and Duvaucel. These two gentlemen were French natiiralists, 

 whose services Sir Stamford had secured while on a visit to Bengal. An 

 unfortunate misunderstanding that soon after their arrival in Sumatra 

 occurred between the Lieutenant-Governor and these two Freijchmen, 

 led, in about twelve months, to a cessation of their labours, and to their 

 departure from Bencoolen ; and Sir Stamford was obliged to undertake 

 the description of the materials collected himself, or to allow the results 

 to be published in France. Hence his papers in the ' Linneani Trans- 

 actions.' The number of species therein catalogued, and more or less 

 described, is about 168. But some birds obtained in the Prince-qf-Wales 

 Island and Singapore are included, and a few species appear to have 

 been introduced into the list through oversight, and on the strength of 

 caged birds. ' 



" lu 1830, Lady Eaffles published a memoir of her late liu.«band, to 

 which was appended a catalogue, by Vigors, of the zoological specimens 

 collected in Sumatra. . . . About 194 species are enumerated. 



" Since 1830, no attempt at a complete account of the birds of Suraatra has 

 been published ; but a good many species not contained in Vigors' list have 

 been discovered and described, principally by the Dutch zoologists, more 

 particularly by Temminck and by Solomon Miiller. Mr. A. E. Wallace, 

 during a stay of about three months in the year 1861, collected some birds 

 in the district of Palembang, penetrating a hundred and twenty miles 

 inland ; but no separate account of his collection has appeared. 



" During a period of about five months, commencing the 30tli of May 

 1876, Mr. Edmond C. Buxton travelled in the Lampong district ... He 

 started from Telok Betong, and went inland to Sukadana, a distance of 

 about eighty miles, and obtained in all 152 species, of which two were 

 undescribed." 



■' From 1877-1879, the Dutch mid-Sumatra expedition, through the 

 Padang Highlands and along the Batang Hari river, added much to our 

 knowledge of the natural history of that region. 



From June to September, 1878, Dr. Beccari, the well-known Italian 

 naturalist, visited and collected on the mountains of Padang, chiefly on 

 Mount Singalan (8900 feet). It contained representatives of many Indo- 

 Chinese genera which have not been found in the Lampongs, some of 

 which were, however, collected by the Author in the more Southeru 

 residency of Palembang. 



In August of the same year, Mr. Carl Bock, a Swedish naturalist, 

 collected over the same region on behalf of the late Lord Tweeddalc^ 

 obtaining 166 species. An account of this collection by Captain Wardlaw 

 Eamsay will be found in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of 

 London, 1880, p. 13. 



During 1880-1881, the Author made extensive collections in the Lam- 

 pong and Palembang Eesidencies, which have been carefully worked out 

 by Mr. F. Nicholson, and a list given in the Ibis for 1879, pp. 51 and 235. 



