DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS IN THE SOCIETY'S MUSEUM. 13 



The large collection of birds which the Society possesses at 

 the present time, and which the foregoing catalogue, numbering 

 in all 154 different birds, fully testifies to, may perhaps be con- 

 sidered to possess sufficient interest as a public exhibition, and 

 an important branch of the Museum, to warrant a few remarks on 

 the distribution, throughout thesis land, of the different species 

 composing it. I therefore venture to submit for the Society's 

 perusal the following notes, which are chiefly the result of four 

 and-a-half years' labour among my feathered friends in Ceylon. 

 1 have also availed myself of the experience of Messrs. Layard 

 and Kelaart, and of Mr. Holdsworth, in cases where they have 

 recorded birds from parts which I, myself, h*ive not visited. I 

 regret to say that my knowledge of what birds in particular are 

 located in the Eastern Province proper is very limited, and there- 

 fore I fear that these notes will contain but little information 

 concerning either the residents in or migrants to that part. It 

 is a district which I have as yet only touched upon from the 

 north and south, but neither myself nor either of the abovenamed 

 gentlemen have ever collected in or explored that extensive and 

 wildest of all Ceylon regions — the Friar's Hood and False Flood 

 ranges, and the immediate south-lying flats, known as the ' • Park 

 Country." It is here that more new species await discovery at 

 the hands of some enterprising naturalist, and when they are found 

 they will, I am confident, possess the additional interest of being, 

 like Mr. Bligh's newly-discovered Arrenga and my Prionochilus, 

 analogous to Malayan and not to Indian forms. Setting 

 aside the Eastern Province however entirely, the distribution 

 of species in the other great divisions of the Island is exceed- 

 ingly interesting, and demonstrates in a remarkable manner 

 how closely vegetation and features of soil are affected by 

 climate, and how birds in their turn are influenced in their 

 choice of habitat by that vegetation and the natural resources of 

 sustenance which it affords them. The north-western and 

 south-eastern districts, or the country surrounding Mannar and 



