92 
Letters , Announcements , §c. 
single species in the whole list of Kattiawar birds to which I 
should apply the term. 
Every one of the species above mentioned has a wide range 
in India ; to the best of my belief all of them occur through¬ 
out a large portion of the peninsula wherever there is forest; 
and some of them, e. g. Copsychus saularis and Crocopusphce- 
nicopteruSj are common in gardens and groves of trees even 
away from the wilder jungles. The birds to which I think 
the expression “ Malabar forms ” should be restricted are 
those characteristic of the hills and forests near the Malabar 
coast. A few of these are met with on some of the higher hill- 
ranges of Southern and Central India, and in the great forest- 
country lying west of Orissa and the northern Circars, but 
not elsewhere in the Indian peninsula. Thus the peculiarly 
Malabar form of Palceornis is not P. rosa , but P. columboides; 
and the following are some of the birds most characteristic of 
the Malabar fauna:— Scops malabaricus , Harpactes fasciutus , 
Chrysophlegma chlorophanes , Micropternus gularis and two 
or three other Woodpeckers, Megal&ma viridis, Xantholcema 
malabarica, Leptocoma minima , Tephrodornis sylvicola, Pericro- 
cotus flammeus, Ochromela nigrorufa , Myiophonus horsfieldii , 
Hypsipetes ganeesa } Phyllornis malabarica , peculiar species 
of Alcippe, Pomatorhinus , Garrulax , and Trochalopterum, 
Dendrocitta leucogastra , &c. &c. It is species such as these, 
together with such forms as Presbytes johnii and P.jubatus , 
Platacanthomys , and peculiar species of mungoose and squir¬ 
rels amongst mammals, Uropeltidce and a host of other marked 
types amongst Reptilia, peculiar genera of the Cyclophoridce 
amongst land-shells, and such forms as Tanalia stomatodon 
among freshwater mollusks, which give a marked character to 
the Malabar province, show the close affinity of its fauna to that 
of Ceylon, and a more distant but still well-marked alliance 
with that of Malayana, and distinguish it at once from that 
which is found in the remainder of the Indian peninsula. 
W. T. Blanford. 
October 1873. 
