320 Viscount Walden on the Muscicapa melanictera. 



of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ' (for 1845), Mr. Blyth had 

 adopted Dr. Jerdon's view of the identity of the two species ; in 

 this he was followed by Prince Bonaparte in the * Conspectus.' 

 And in the ' Birds of India ' Dr. Jerdon has continued to re- 

 gard them as identical, but for no better reason, so far as I can 

 discover, than his original surmise above mentioned. A year 

 later Mr. Blyth, in the same journal, gave a description of a 

 specimen he had received from Ceylon, evidently, by his account, 

 identical with the Cap Negre. To this species, while extremely 

 doubtful whether it might not prove to be the female of B. ruhi- 

 neus, Jerd., he gave the provisional name of aberrans. In the 

 ' Catalogue of the Calcutta Museum/ Mr. Blyth correctly re- 

 duced this name to a synonym of j^. atricapilla, Vieill., thus 

 ceasing to regard it as a female bird ; at the same time he 

 allowed Dr. Jerdon's ruhineus to rank as a distinct species. In 

 his ' Ornithology of Ceylon ' Mr. Layard recorded it as Pi/cnono- 

 tus at7'icapiUus. In the Supplement to the ' Genera of Birds ' 

 Mr. Gray gave the specific name oi monachus to Vieillot's JEgi- 

 thina atricapilla, and made it a Parus; and Prince Bonaparte, in 

 1854, made the same species the type of his genus Meroinxus, 

 he having previously erroneously referred it to Swainson's Afri- 

 can genus Parisoma. 



But long before Le Vaillant published his plate and descrip- 

 tion of Le Cap Negre, Brown had figured and described a bird, 

 procured in Ceylon by Governor Laten, under the name of the 

 " Yellow-breasted Flycatcher. '^ His words are these : — " Head 

 and cheek black. Back and coverts of v^ings cinereous brown, 

 dashed with yellow. Primaries and tail dusky, edged with pale 

 yellow. Breast and belly of a fine yellow. '^ The figure, although 

 wretched in an artistic sense, represents a yellow bird with a 

 black head and black cheeks, and with white tips to the under 

 surface of the rectrices. Upon this figure Gmelin founded his 

 Muscicapa melanictera, a species we find admitted by many sub- 

 sequent authors, but by none identified. Prince Bonaparte, as 

 far as I have been able to discover, is the first author who re- 

 ferred it to a known species; and he, singularly enough, made it 

 a synonym of Gmelin's Motacilla [lora) zeylanica. Now this 

 species was also founded by Gmelin on one of Brown's figures. 



