24 
about the end of March or beginning of April. It is found in the summer all over Persia, at all 
habitable altitudes, generally breeding in ruined mud walls or kanats.” Capt. Hutton, Col. Swinhoe, 
and Sir O. St. John record it from Afghanistan, and Col. Biddulph and Mr. Scully from Gilgit. 
According to the latter it is “plentiful in the hottest valleys of the Gilgit District throughout the 
summer, and there makes day hideous with its harsh grating cry; it does not appear to ascend above 
6000 feet. In 1880 it made its first appearance in Gilgit on the 30th April. Most of these birds 
leave us in October; but I have observed stragglers as late as the 11th November.” Mr. A. O. Hume 
lecords it from Sind, Mooltan, Peshawur, Simla, and Nynee-Tal, the last-named locality being, 
he remarks, probably its eastern limit in India. It winters in North-western India and breeds in 
Kashmir and the Peshawur Valley. Where the present species meets with Coracias indicus^ it doubtless 
interbieeds, and Blyth records a specimen from Kashmir intermediate between these two species. In 
Eastern Kussia the Common Boiler occurs in the Transcaspian region, Turkestan, and Western 
Siberia, and Dr. Otto Finsch writes respecting its range there {1. c.) as follows:—“ We frequently met 
with the Boiler in Southern Siberia, where it affected the vicinity of the steppe rivers, and nested on 
their banks. On the 12th and 18th May we met with it on the river Kysil Aschdschi in the steppe 
south of Ala-kul, on the 19th at Urdschar in Turkestan, on the 22nd behind Tschugutschak, and on 
the 29th June behind Barnaul. In the Slovzoff Museum in Omsk were specimens from that 
vicinity.” 
In Africa it has been recorded from various localities down to the Cape Colony. It is common 
in Egypt and Nubia, where, however, it is, according to Capt. Shelley (Z. c.), “only a bird of passage, 
arriving on its way north about the end of April. I first met with it at Koos on the 26th of that 
month; and two days Jater I killed three out of a party of four that I saw near Dendera. In the 
spring of the year they are not rare in Egypt. They are rather shy; hut, owing to a fancy they 
appear to have for certain clumps of trees, they may be easily obtained by waiting near where they 
are first seen, and then getting them driven back by a companion. The birds which I shot at 
Dendera were obtained in this manner, as they had at first slipped out at the further side of the 
clump and settled in the open fields. The food of the three that I examined consisted entirely of 
beetles.” 
Von Heuglin met with it during the winter on the Somali coast, in Abyssinia, and on the upper 
White Nile. It has been recorded from various parts of North Africa by different naturalists. 
Dr. Konig found it common in Tunis and Tripoli, where it breeds. Mr. Salvin records it also from 
Algeria as common and breeding in May; and Col, Irby and Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, who met with it 
near Tangier and in Eastern Morocco, say that it occurs in large numbers on passage in April and 
May, and again in August. The former found it breeding at Earache, and the latter remarks that it 
“ breeds further down the west coast.” It has been met with in various parts of the African 
Continent down as far as the Cape Colony. Verreaux received it from Senegal. Professor Barboza 
du Bocage records it from Angola. Andersson found it common in Ondongo, but less so in Damara- 
land proper than C. 'pilosa or G. caudata, occurring only in the rainy season; and Dr. Sharpe states 
(in Bayard’s B. of S. Afr. p. 102) that it “ has not yet been noticed in any numbers within the Cape 
Colony and is doubtless only a winter visitant. We believe it to be the species noticed under the 
heading of C. abyssinica in the first edition, for it has been pointed out that C. garrula is exactly 
similar to that species without the elongated tail-feathers {of. Sharpe, Ibis, 1871, p. 201). We 
consider that C. abyssinica is confined to North-eastern Africa and Western Africa, and has not yet 
appeared in South Africa at all. The European Boiler has been received from one or two places 
along the northern border of the colony, also from the neighbourhood of Spring-bok Fountain in 
I 
