1 85 1 .] Mammalia and Birds of Ceylon. 1 5 3 



When therefore, with all the reverence due to this eminent and 

 respected man of letters, I venture at this particular time to prove that 

 his assertion was erroneous, it is in the ardent hope of resuscitating 

 among our countrymen in the east, and more particularly among the 

 members of this Society, a study which the present position of our 

 Anglo-Indian empire seems so peculiarly to favour. 



Report on the Mammalia and more remarkable species of Birds inha- 

 biting Ceylon. — By E. Blyth. 



The following notices of the mammalia and birds of Ceylon are 

 founded chiefly on two cases of specimens forwarded for examination 

 by Dr. E. F. Kelaart, of the Ceylon Medical Service, and upon the 

 former contributions of Dr. Templeton, E. L. Layard, Esq., and A. 

 O. Brodie, Esq., but especially of Mr. Layard^ who continues very 

 zealously to investigate several branches of the zoology of the island. 



MAMMALIA. 



Quadrumana. — Of five species (or very distinct races) of Monkey 

 in Ceylon, one only is known to inhabit the neighbouring mainland. 

 This is Presbytis priamus, Elliot, nobis (/. A. S. XIII, 470, XVI, 

 732), the small crested Hunumdn of peninsular India, which is com- 

 mon in the Jaffna peninsula at the extreme north of the island, and 

 probably to some distance farther south : but generally over the low 

 northern half of Ceylon, we have in its place the Pr. thersites, 

 Elliot, nobis (J. A. S. XVI, 127, XVII, 248), a very similar race but 



recent paper in the Journal, I quoted Bunsen's new Egyptian chronology, I have 

 now lying before me (sent from England by our able friend, Mr. Laidlay) the 

 thirteenth edition of Gliddon's Ancient iEgypt, in the appendix to which he notes 

 that the more recent discoveries of Lepsius and the Prussian literati "will carry 

 the age of Menes some centuries beyond B. C. 3643, back by the incontrovertible 

 testimony of the Pyramidal monuments." 



H. T. 



