132 
Mr. R. Swinhoe —A Voice on 
however, to be laughed out of the idea of their identity, and so 
did not compare the two together. I suspect this will prove to 
be another of our summer visitants that find winter-quarters in 
the Indian archipelago. 
Allusion is made (p. 47) to the Microscelis amaurotis “of 
China.” It ocurs in Japan, whence it was originally described 
in the ‘ Fauna Japonica.' Has it ever been brought from 
China ? 
I will conclude these remarks with a prayer that in future all 
my past notes on Chinese Ornithology, in the ( Ibis/ be read in 
conjunction with my “Catalogue of the Birds of China,” 
published in the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society 9 for 
1863. This last embraces all the latest comparisons made, and 
identifications worked out, by myself before leaving England. 
With regard to Flamingos, though not included in our 
humble fauna, I should like to record one little fact, which 
I had the pleasure of communicating some time since to 
Mr. Darwin. An uncle of mine, who has been in his day a 
great Indian sportsman, informed me that he once shot a 
Flamingo, the legs of which were covered with barnacles 
( Balani ). Now the Flamingo is known to sit on her nest with 
her legs dangling over the sides, and, I presume, continues to 
sit, like some other birds, until the young are hatched, the 
male feeding her during the period. Flamingoes are stated to 
pile up their nests in shallow water. We may infer, then, that 
the bird in question had built her nest in a shallow into which 
the salt-water flowed, and that she continued to keep her legs 
submerged in the briny liquid until the barnacles formed. I 
know no other way of accounting for the phenomenon. The 
truth of this solution might be tested by ascertaining how long 
it usually takes for an object submerged in the sea to contract 
barnacles, and to compare this when ascertained with the term 
of the Flamingoes incubation. 
In Mr. Tristram's “Ornithology of Palestine” (Ibis, 1865, 
p. 77) is the remark that species “which resort to the highest 
latitudes for nidification also pass further than others to the 
southward in winter.” This my experience in Eastern Asia 
quite enables me to confirm, and, to some extent, the axiom 
