On a collection of Birds made by Dr. C. Klaesi in the Highlands of Padang (W. Sumatra) during the winter 1884—85

Repeated and successful attempts have been made within the last 10 years to increase our knowledge of the Avifauna of Sumatra, and though much is still left undone, the time cannot be very far, that we shall have a tolerably good idea of it and its relation to that of the Continent and the great neighbouring Islands of Java and Borneo. The first intelligence of Sumatran Birds is given by Sir Stamford Raffles in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, Vol. XIII, p. 277-331, with an appendix (pp. 339, 340) in 1822. This very important account mentions 168 species, which were collected at Bencoolen (S. W. Sumatra), the residence of Raffles’, and its vicinity. More than 50 of these species were considered to he new. — About 10 years later (1830) his widow published a memoir of Raffles, with an appendix from the hand of Vigors’, in which 30 more species, also collected by Raffles, are enumerated, so that the number of species, the first knowledge of which is due to Raffles, is brought to the considerable number of 198.