3 
Mr. E. Blyth on the Birds of India. 
no difference whatever in size; but that from the East Indies is 
considerably larger, the length of its wing, in fact, measuring 
7 in., while that of the Senegal race is not quite 6 in.”* The 
late H. E. Strickland, however, in a list of birds procured in 
Kordofan, remarks that “this species, which extends across 
Africa from Abyssinia to Senegal, is identical with specimens 
from India f .” Col. Chesney, moreover, notices them in Syria as 
“abounding in the spring J.” Of numerous Asiatic specimens 
examined (from Upper India, Bengal, Ceylon, Burmah, &c.), I 
have found the length of wing to be very regularly 6i in., 
though a few old males attain to 7 in. According to Lieut. Irwin, 
“the Parrot and Maina are scarcely natives of Turkistan, or at 
least of the country around the Oxus § 39 ■—by which, I presume, 
he means that they do occur there as visitants. 
This is one of the commonest of Indian birds, inhabiting the 
plains chiefly, if not exclusively. It is found alike in Ceylon, the 
Deyra Doon, Assam, Sylhet, parts of Burmah, and the Malayan 
peninsula (to the latitude of Penang), preferring cultivated dis¬ 
tricts ; and, so far as I have seen, it is the only Indian Parrakeet 
that affects the vicinity of human habitations, flocks of them often 
settling on buildings, especially if in gardens with trees about 
them, and a few pairs commonly breeding in suitable cavities 
about large buildings. It is the only species observed wild in 
the densely populous immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta ; but 
in the nearest jungle-districts, more especially on hilly ground, 
it is replaced by P. rosa. The multitudes of them about some 
of the stations in the plains of Upper India, particularly where 
there are large avenues of trees (as at Allahabad), are indeed 
astonishing; and Mr. Layard^s description of them in Ceylon 
will be familiar to the ornithological readerIn the dense 
forest-jungles of the hill-regions lying eastward of the Bay of 
Bengal it does not occur, though found in open country, as in 
Upper Pegu. In the Tenasserim provinces, remarks Dr. Mason, 
* Nat. Libr., Birds of West Africa, ii. p. 175. 
t Proc. Zool. Soc. 1850, p. 219. 
% Journal of the Euphrates Expedition, i. pp. 443, 537. 
§ Journ. As. Soc. viii. p. 1007. 
If Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. xiii. (1854) p. 262. 
B 2 
