Page:Stray feathers. Journal of ornithology for India and its dependencies (IA strayfeathersjou11873hume).pdf/42

26 species do vary from white to deep blood-red, and from the size of a Pigeon to that of a Peregrine; but it will require a good deal of further evidence to convince me of the fact. A. O. H.

 

is certainly vo group of birds that is more troublesome or perplexing than the wagtails, and though I cannot pretend to have solved all the diffieulties in regard to our Indian members of the group, I hope to be able to furnislı a few notes that may facilitate their ultimate solution.

In the present paper I propose to confine my remarks to the grey and black wagtails of which M. Alla, Linn, and M. Yarrelli, Gould, may be taken as types.

Setting asido Motuvillu Tludraspalara, the large size (length ou the average, 9 inches; wing, 4 inches or nearly so,) and well defined plumage of which zenders it always casy of identification, there remain fire species which have been admitted by Mr. Blyth into our Indiau Avifauna. In two of these, in their breed- ing plumage at any rate, the whole back is black, namely M. Luzoniensis, Scopoli, and H. Hodgsone, G. R. Gray; while in the other three, the backs remain at all seasons grey ; Damely M. Personala, Gould, M. Dukhunersis, Sykes, and M. Alba, Linnæus.

Besides M. Luconiensis and Hodgsoni, Mr. Gray admits a third castern species M. Japonica, Swinhec, figured by Schlegel in the Fauna Japonica, as J. Lugens,

All these three black-backed races arc somowbat larger than the grey-backed ones with which we shall have to deal hercafter, the wings in the males varying apparently from 3-7 to 3-9 in- ches, while in the same sex in Alba and Dukhunensis, they average from 3-4 to 3.6 inches, and in Personala from 3-5 to 9.7 inches, only in one specimen out of fifty extending to 3.75 inches. The bills also in the eastern black-backed races are as a role con- spicuously longer.

Mr. Sehlegel, if I understand him correctly, considers all these three easteru black-backed races to be one and the same species, and he further unites with them M. Lugubris, Pallas, (figured by Gould, birds of Europe, pl. 142,) which has a partly grey back, as one stage of the winter plumage of this same species.

In regard to Lugubris, I am not in a position to offer any useful opinion; but I have every reason to believe that Luzoniensis, Horgsoni, and Japonica are only different stages 