1879.] 
President's Address. 
53 
retention of gulls and ducks together in one order, and plovers with herons 
and storks in another. If there is any one point clearly made out, it is that 
gulls are far more closely allied to plovers than to ducks. This is, of 
course, only one, instance out of several: the classification of swifts and 
goat-suckers beside swallows, of Purylaimidm beside hornbills, and of par¬ 
rots next to wood-peckers are gross violations of natural affinity. Yet 
whilst almost everything else has been changed ; whilst the nomenclature 
of a large proportion of the birds has been altered, a mass of additional 
information added as to range, habits and nidification ; whilst the very limits 
of the country classed as British India have been so greatly extended as to 
change entirely the geographical range of the fauna, the worst feature of 
Jerdon’s work, the classification, has been so religiously maintained that 
even the numbers given by him to the species enumerated are carefully 
quoted, and the numerous additional species inserted after their nearest 
allies. It is scarcely necessary to say that these remarks do not apply to 
Captain Legge’s work on Ceylon birds, the arrangement of which, so far as 
it has gone, is consistent with our present knowledge of the class. We 
are, however, promised a most useful work on the Game Birds of India, in¬ 
cluding, it may be presumed, the Anseres, Columba, Gallinee, Fuiicarice, 
Alectorides, and Limicolce of Mr. Sclater’s classification, but which would 
consist of broken fragments of orders under the old system. It is to be 
hoped that in this, which is very likely to he the first book on zoology 
studied by many future ornithologists, the classification will not be such as 
grievously to mislead every tyro who uses the work. 
It is impossible to write of Indian ornithology without deploring the 
loss it has sustained in the death of the Marquis of Tweeddale, for many 
years past one of our first authorities on all subjects connected with the 
Avi-fauna of the Oriental region, who died at the close of the year after a 
few days’ illness. To many of the working ornithologists of India, and espe¬ 
cially to those who are carrying on the study in England, the loss will he 
irreparable, the more so as Lord Tweeddale was engaged upon a new edition 
of Jerdon’s ‘ Birds of India.’ Unquestionably such a work, compiled with 
the advantage of access to the libraries and collections of Europe, would 
have remedied the defects almost inseparable from the preparation of a 
similar monograph with only the means available in this country. 
There is but little novelty to record in Peptilia or Amphibia,. Colonel 
Beddome continues his discoveries amongst the wonderfully rich fauna of 
the Malabar hills, and some curious forms of lizards, snakes and frogs have 
been described by him. Some interesting forms have also been obtained by 
Mr. Davison in Tenasserim, and described in the Society’s Journal, and a 
new snake has been captured in Sikkim, one of the last places from which 
a novelty could have been expected. 
