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Show 1875.] RAPTORIAL BIRDS OF INDIA. 17 up to that date. The result is that I, or rather ornithologists generally, have to acknowledge certain errors consequent on a limited knowledge of a most difficult group of birds. At the same time I am glad to be able to introduce several new species as occurring in the country to which my observations have been confined, viz. the deltaic portion of the North-western Provinces, thus making (with the necessary corrections and additions) no less than 48 species of Raptores known to occur in this district. This is the number that have as yet come under my own observation. But further investigation will doubtless enable me to add several more, such as Falco babylonicus, Haliaetus plumbeus, &c. Additions to former lists are indicated by an asterisk, *. 1. VULTUR MONACHUS, Linn. All the specimens examined by me have alight fulvous nuchal patch, almost white ; but the authors of the * Birds of Europe ' do not allude to this peculiarity in the Indian bird, nor is it shown in the plate. 2. VULTUR CALVUS, Scop. On the 15th of July, 1872, my friend Mr. Spry took an egg, flushing the bird off her nest, which also contained an egg of Falco jugger. *3 bis. GYPS FULVESCENS, Hume. The large fulvous-coloured Vulture already alluded to I identify as belonging to this species, and not to G. himalayensis of the same author. 5. GYPS BENGALENSIS, Gm. Last cold season I found a small colony of these Vultures breeding on a clump of high cocoa-nut palms (Cocos nucifera), whence I obtained four eggs. I have also lately taken three eggs from one nest. and two from another, but of course not the produce of the same birds. The tree on which these nests were built was the rendezvous of a large assemblage of these useful birds, which were attracted to this solitary tree by the carcass of one of the mail-cart horses whicli had died on the roadside. 6. NEOPHRON GINGINIANUS, Lath. Captain Beagin, of H.M. 105th Regiment, has lately sent me a series of Neophrons from Aden, which appear to be referable to the African form N. percnopterus, Linn. The skins are badly put up, and they are not sexed ; so that the minute differences pointed out by Blythf cannot be compared with Indian examples. The series comprises both black-billed and black-clawed examples, which predominate, as well as white ones, so that this one difference cannot seemingly hold good; but the corneous portion of the bill, as well as the claws, when black are certainly of a much deeper black in the Aden t Cf. ' Ibis ' for 1866, p. 233. PROC. ZOOL. SOC-1875, No. II. 2 |