428 
Rev. H. B. Tristram on the 
mark. At first sight it reminded me much of a Plover in the 
manner in which it rose and scudded away. Indeed there is 
nothing of the Lark in its flight, except in early morning, when 
I have watched it rise perpendicularly to some elevation and 
then suddenly drop, repeating these gambols uninterruptedly 
over exactly the same spot for nearly an hour, accompanying 
itself by a loud whistling song. It runs with great rapidity, 
and it requires no little speed of foot to capture a broken¬ 
winged victim. In the stomach of those I opened I found 
small coleoptera, sand-flies, and hard seeds. There is something 
very graceful in all its movements, and the distinct markings of 
its wings and the expansion of its long black tail render it 
really a beautiful bird when flying. 
The egg is very large, 12 lines by 8 ; the ground-colour like 
that of C . duponti , but the brown blotches smaller and far more 
closely distributed, especially towards the broader end. It 
would not be easy to select it out of a series of some varieties 
of Lanius excubitor. 
88. Certhilauda salvtni, Tristram, Ibis, vol. i. p. 57. 
(Salving Lark.) 
I have ventured to describe 
this bird as a species, and to 
name it after my friend Osbert 
Salvin, one of the most zeal¬ 
ous of our young ornitholo¬ 
gists, and the most amiable 
of travelling companions, 
though I am aware that it 
may be termed a local race 
more properly than a species. 
Its length is 7*8 inches, the 
wing 4*5, tail 3*1, tarsi 1*3, 
being about 1*5 inch shorter than C. desertorum. I found I 
could always distinguish the species on the wing by the broader 
white on the secondaries. It is also a much more slender bird, 
and the difference in the size of the skeleton is far greater than 
would have been imagined from the appearance of the skins in a 
cabinet. 
