148 THE WHITE-WINGED WOOD-DUCK. 
Beyond this nothing certain is known of its distribution with- 
in our limits, though it probably occurs almost throughout the 
well-watered submontane primeval forest tracts of the entire 
Indo-Burmese section of the Empire, Assam, Cachar, Sylhet, 
Manipur, Hill Tipperah, Pegu and Tenasserim, and possibly 
Chittagong and Arakan also. 
It is quite true that long ago Dr. Jerdon wrote to me as 
follows :— 
“T have done nothing as yet in the way of collecting ; you 
can’t get any birds off a steamer, but I have seen several flocks 
of Casarca leucoptera in the lower part of the Brahmaputra, 
where it joins the Ganges, not far above Dacca, where, indeed, 
Simson had seen it. It is very shy, keeps much to the middle 
of wide rivers, or isolated sandbanks, and is always in flocks 
of 10 to 30 or 40. I was quite near enough to make them out 
distinctly.” 
But although, in justice to Jerdon, who may after all have been 
right, | feel bound to put what he said on record, I myself 
believe that he was entirely wrong. 
In the first place, these localities have been examined by 
dozens of people subsequently, several of them specially in- 
structed in that behalf, and no one has since been able to meet 
with the bird there. Inthe second place, what Jerdon says is 
entirely opposed to all that I have been able to ascertain of the 
habits of this species. I believe that he mistook flocks of 
Sarcidiornis melanonotus, which are yearly met with just where 
he and Simson thought they saw the Wood-Duck, for this 
latter species. 
Outside our limits we have met with it in the neighbourhood 
of Poonga, Kussoom and Kopah in the northern portions of the 
Malay Peninsula, but never towards the south. 
It has never been recorded, I believe, from either Borneo or 
Sumatra ; but, as already mentioned, (ote, p. 147), a nearly allied 
form, hitherto commonly accepted as identical, A. scutulata of 
Miller, occurs in Java. This is apparently either a distinct 
species, or possibly a prolific hybrid with some other species, 
(the Muscovy Duck perhaps,) derived from captive individuals 
brought by the Dutch from the Malay Peninsula. 
Turning to the Leyden Museum Cat. (Azsezes, 64) it seems to me clear that the 
Javan bird must, p77d facie, be accepted as a distinct species. Our plate, so far as 
being an accurate fac-szmzle of the specimen I sent to be figured is concerned, is 
perhaps the best in the whole work, But Professor Schlegel describes the Javan 
bird as having the entire head and neck pure white, (not white and fulvous, spotted 
with black as in our bird), omits all reference to the broad conspicuous black band 
round the base of the neck, and extending to the sides of breast, and says that the 
rest of the plumage is chocolate brown ‘‘flus ou moins tapiré de BLANC sur le 
manteau, le dessous et les couvertures caudales,” of which there is not the faintest 
trace in our bird. br : 
Apparently either the Indo-Malayan form is quite distinct, or the Javan birds are 
hybrids, or a domesticated and much modified race ; and, until further light is 
thrown upon the question, it will certainly be preferable to accept Blyth’s name for 
our species, 
