23 
Birds in Southern Ceylon. 
whole troop would move off to another/and so on through 
the jungle. A male from the central province measured 4’8 W , 
and has a wing 2 , 3", while another from the Singha-Rajah 
hills has a total length of 4*7" and a wing of 2'2 n ; the females 
are smaller and less dark on the forehead, having the wing 
up to 2 , 1 // in length. I traced Prionochilus vincens (Legge's 
Flower-pecker) up to the same locality at an elevation of about 
2500 feet; so that this little novelty must now rank among 
our Ai//-species. It was found much about the edges of clear¬ 
ings in the forest, and affected, wherever it grew, the flowers 
of the hill-species of Bowitteya (Osbeckia virgata ), a very com¬ 
mon shrub throughout the island. It was evidently breeding 
when I was there, in September, as the testes of one I pro¬ 
cured were very much developed. The iris is more strictly 
brownish red than “ reddish,” as I described it in my first 
notice of the bird to Dr. Sclater. It is a remarkable fact, as 
noticed also by Mr. Hugh Neville (Journ. R. A. S. (Ceylon), 
1871, page 33), that Corvus splendens is entirely absent from 
the south of Ceylon, where it is replaced abundantly by C. 
culminatus in towns and villages as well as in the country. 
Parus cinereus and Cissa ornata inhabit our hill-region. The 
Jay is local in its distribution, being very numerous in some 
forests of the Morowa and Colonna korles and entirely want- 
in other tracts. As is the case with all our hill-species, and 
which I wish especially to call attention to in this paper, it 
descends to lower elevations in the southern than in the cen¬ 
tral hills. I have seen it along the banks of the Gindurah at 
about 1500 feet above the sea. 
Among Mynahs the abundance of Eulabes religiosa is some¬ 
what noteworthy. It replaces Acridotheres tristis at about 
ten miles inland, and is very common in forest- and also in 
cultivated lands along the rivers of the interior. It ranges 
up to about 1000 feet on the Gindurah. Far more remarkable, 
however, is the abundance of Temenuchus senex , that most 
local of all Ceylon birds, in the Morowa-Korle and Singha- 
Rajah ranges. Unlike its nearest ally in Ceylon, Temenuchus 
pagodarum (so abundant in the Hambantotta districts), it is 
strictly arboreal in its habits. I first met with it in the 
