Page:Stray feathers. Journal of ornithology for India and its dependencies (IA strayfeathersjou11873hume).pdf/55

Rh These two species I should at present identify as Alauda Arvensis, Linueus, and Alauda Malabarica, Scop.

Our specimens of Alauda Arvensis do not belong precisely to the race to which we Englishmen usually allot the name of Arvensis. On the contrary, the wing is slightly smaller, the hind claw and tarsus as well as the bill slightly shorter, and the lores and the fore-part of the face are a somewhat purer white. At least such is the case with my specimens. This species, so far as my observations go, occurs only in the Himalayas and as a winter visitant to the plains of the North-Western Punjab. It would appear to correspond closely, if not exactly, with that race of the European skylark which Pastor Brehm separated as Alauda Agrestis. This too is the bird which Hodgson designated Dulcivox, and I may note that it is a great mistake to identify his Dulcivox with either Triborhyncha or Orientalis vel Leiopus. Hodgson's original drawings clearly shew that Dulcivox was a larger bird, with a wing of from 4 to 4.5 inches, the Himalayan representative, in fact, of Arvensis; and I have a bird killed at Murdan in December 1870, absolutely identical in every respect with his beautiful figure (now in my custody) of Alauda Dulcivox. On the other hand, his two drawings of Triborhyncha and one of Orientalis vel Leiopus, show that both these species, or races, or perhaps different sexes of the same race belonged to the smaller skylark (all the different races of which I, for the present, include under Malabarica) the wings of which vary from 33 to 3-8 inches.

Of course our larger Himalayan lurk, Arvensis as I should call it, but Agrestis or Dulcivox, if any one considers it deserving of specific, separation, varies somewhat in length of hind claw and bill, a great deal in length of wing according to sex and still more in plumage, according to both sex and season; but in all these matters, exactly parallel variations are to be met with in the series of the true English Arvensis that I possess, and whether we can agree to call our Indian bird Arvensis or Duloivox, there is only, I think, one race of the larger Indian skylark. A larger scries of specimens however of this species is necessary before I could pronounce with any great certainty on this point.

When we come to Malabaricus, however, numerous races appear to exist. There is first the true Gulgula of the plains of the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, Bundelkund, and Rajpootana; second, the darker typical Malabaricus from the Neilgherries and also from Lower and Eastern Bengal; third, a race intermediate between these from the billy, southern, and eastern portions of the Central Provinces; fourth, the true Triborhyncha from the Himalayas, from Murree to Sikhim, ranging up to heights of