Mr. Swainson's Reply to his Reviewers. 497 



instance as the white-headed tody, and the so-called Musci- 

 capa leucocilla, are wholly omitted, possibly because Mr. 

 Swainson has not succeeded in making them square with the 

 quinary arrangement, or the theory of representation."* 



I will now call upon this reviewer to name any one of these 

 " several important generic forms " which, according to my 

 definition of the family of Muscicapidae, has been "wholly 

 omitted." It is due to his own credit, and to the credit of 

 your Magazine, to substantiate this assertion. And in the 

 next place I call upon him, as another test of his knowledge 

 of this family, to tell the public what he knows of the white- 

 headed tody, and the "so-called Muscicapa leucocilla" more 

 than what he has gathered from the following passage at p. 

 90 of my second volume of Birds. 



" Besides these genera there are several black and white coloured birds, 

 having a general resemblance to the foregoing, (Fluvicola, Perspicilla, Sec), 

 which would seem to enter among the water-chats ; yet as we have not suf- 

 ficiently analyzed the group, we must leave this point undetermined. A- 

 mong these are the white-headed tody of the old writers, which is either a 

 Tyrannula or an aberrant Fluvicola, as well as the Muscicapa leucocilla of 

 Hahl, which, in outward appearance, so much resembles a manakin, that 

 it may possibly prove a representative of that family." 



Now it so happens that I have chanced to see and study 

 these two birds in South America, and their habits, no less 

 than their structure, exclude them from my definition of the 

 Muscicapidcc. Let the reviewer, therefore, who calls them 

 " important generic " (not subgeneric) " forms'" in my family, 

 state his grounds for this opinion. But I will not put his 

 presumed knowledge of this family to such a test, I will sim- 

 ply call upon him to tell us where he got the name of the "so- 

 called Muscicapa leucocilla, " except from my volume ? — 

 Where is this name to be found elsewhere ? And in what 

 work is the bird first described and figured ? If he cannot 

 answer these questions, he will confirm my strong suspicion, 



*This assertion is just as well-founded as another in the same number of 

 your Magazine, p. 355 ; where it is said that " the kingfisher family (Hal- 

 cyonidce) only, is feebly represented in America by a few piscivorous spe- 

 cies; all the remainder being peculiar to the eastern hemisphere." Why! 

 America is actually the chief metropolis of the piscivorous kingfishers ! a 

 circumstance well known to every experienced ornithologist. With the ex- 

 ception, indeed, of my Ispida gigantea and bitorquata, and another, I am 

 unacquainted with any long-tailed kingfishers that are not found in Ame- 

 rica, where the largest and most powerful species abound on the banks of 

 all the great rivers. On the other hand, the short -tailed "feeble" race, re- 

 presented by A. ispida, is totally excluded from America; while those which 

 are " peculiar to the eastern hemisphere," (Halcyon, Sw.), are not piscivo- 

 rous, but almost entirely insectivorous. 



