representatives, Chelidon lagopoda, cannot as yet Be laid
down, for Russian ornithologists have hardly recognized
their distinctness. The latter however was alone found by
Mr. Seehohm on the Jennisei,* hut the former is said not to
be rare in Persia, and though as regards India it was only
known to Jerdon from one locality on the Neilgherries,
Tickell records it from Moulmein (J. A. S. B. xx'iv. p. 277),
adding that large flocks occur in India from time to time—a
statement confirmed by subsequent observers. In Arabia,
Egypt and Nubia, it is only a bird of passage, and since Mr.
Blanford obtained but a single specimen in Abyssinia in
February, it seems to winter more to the southward. The
same inference may be drawn from its being very scarce at
that season in Algeria though numerous there in summer.
But we know no more of its further African wanderings than
that Mr. Keulemans shot an example in January on Prince’s
Island in the Gulf of Guinea, where he was. told, says Mr.
Dresser, that it had not been before observed. It seems
also to be but a straggler in the Canaries and Madeira, and
is not recorded from the Azores.
In the adult the bill is black: the irides brown : the top
and sides of the head, nape, wing-coverts and back, rich,
glossy bluish-black, the feathers of the nape and back white
at the base ; rump and upper tail-coverts, except those next
the tail which are glossy bluish-black, white; wing- and tail-
quills dull black, shafts white beneath; chin and all the
lower part of the body white, as are the feathers which
cover the legs and toes ; axillaries and lower wing-coverts
pale brown : claws greyish horn-colour.
The whole length is rather more than five inches and a
quarter; from the carpal joint to the tip of the first primary,
which is the longest, four inches and a quarter.
There is no external distinction of sex. The young are
sooty-brown above with hardly any gloss, and not of so pure
a white beneath, while the tail is shorter and less forked.
*. There they attempted to huild nests on the masts of his ship. Herr Holmgren
(Skand. Fogl. p. 377) quotes an account of our Martin building its nest
and bringing up a brood on board a steamer plying on the river Klar in Sweden.
PASSERES. I IIR TJNBTNTBJF,.
Cotile riparia (Linnaeus*).
THE SAND-MARTIN.
Hirundo riparia.
Cotile, F. Boie f .—Bill short, depressed and very wide at the base, commissure
straight: Nostrils basal, oval, partly closed by a membrane and opening
laterally. Wings, with nine primaries, long and pointed. Tail forked, of twelve
feathers, the outermost not abruptly attenuated. Legs and feet slender, and
bare except a tuft of feathers on the tarsus just above the hallux ; toes moderate,
three in front, one behind ; claws strong.
T h e S and-M artin is the smallest of the Hirundinida of
this country, and commonly the earliest to arrive in spring;
but, not presenting itself to the gaze of men by at once
frequenting their habitations, its annual return is not so
regularly, or so generally noticed.l Indeed for some time
* Hirundo riparia, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 344.
+ Isis, 1822, p. 550,
J The Editor suspects that most of the “ Early Swallows” of newspaper-para-