}

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6 INTRODUCTION

Islands. The history of the ‘Birds of Ceylon’ by Major Vincent Legge is simply a model work.
Having resided in the island for seven years, he devoted his attention to its ornithology, and has
published the results of his studies in a large quarto volume of 1237 pages.

No connected account has yet been published of the birds of Assam and the hills of North-
eastern Bengal, such as the Khasia, Naga, Garo, and Munipur hills. McClelland collected a
certain number of specimens in Assam, which were presented by him to the India Museum, and
are now in the national collection. They are mostly wretchedly preserved, and are without any indication
of locality, sex, or date of capture. To Colonel Godwin-Austen we are indebted for scattered lists of
the birds procured by him and his assistants during the surveys of the hill-ranges of North-eastern
Bengal; and a comnected account of the ornithological results obtained by these expeditions would
be of the greatest assistance to students. These hill-ranges seem to have been well explored by Colonel
Godwin-Austen, who bas described some beautiful new species, and whose collection of birds from these
localities is very extensive.

The province of Arracan is almost unknown as regards its ornithology. In 1875 the late Mr. Blyth
prepared a list of the “Birds of Burmah;” but unfortunately bis death prevented the publication by
his own hands: it was, however, most ably edited by the late Marquis of T'weeddale [then Lord Walden],
who not only added his own information on the subject, but included the birds. recorded shortly before by
Mr. Hume from Tenasserim, and the important collections made by Captain Wardlaw Ramsay in the State
of Karen-nee. We have not yet alluded to the labours of an excellent naturalist in Pegu, Mr. Eugene
W. Oates, who has quite recently incorporated the results of his former papers along with those of
other field-naturalists in an admirable ‘ Handbook to the Birds of British Burmah.’ This work gives
a concise account of his own researches in Pegu, and those of Mr. Davison and Captain Bingham in
Tenasserim. We may refer to this work, one of the best of its kind ever written, as proving by the
numberless instances in which Mr. Hume’s name is quoted, the immense influence which he has exercised
on Asiatic ornithology.

Here must be mentioned also the work by Dr. Anderson on the zoological results of the
second expedition to Yunnan. Unfortunately this expedition did not succeed in penetrating further
than the frontiers of the latter province; but many interesting observ

ations were made during the

brief stay of the above-named naturalist in Yunnan, and on the route traversed by the expedition