196 Messrs. O. Salvin and F. DiiCaue Godman on a 



name at all, but merely told his readers tliat lie considered 

 the birdj which he described as being found in " great numbers 

 throughout Pei*siaj" to be the " Porphyrio '' veterum, i. e. of 

 ancient writers. Secondly, it seems that there is no evidence 

 whatever of Gmelin's " Porphi/rio " having been tlie P. hya- 

 cinthinus, or of that species ever having been found to occur 

 nearly so far east as Persia. Even in Egypt the ordinary 

 Porphyrio is certainly the green-backed P. niadagascariensis 

 (sive chloronotvs) ; and. the P. hyacinthinus appears to be 

 restricted to Spain and Algeria. In Mesopotamia and the 

 Arabian peninsula the prevalent Porphyrio is certainly the 

 Indian P. pulverulentus, as there are living in the Zoological 

 Society^s Gardens at the present time examples of this species 

 received from Bagdad and from the Hedjaz, or Arabian coast- 

 range of the Red Sea. It is therefore in the highest degree 

 probable that the same species prevails throughout Persia, as 

 we know it does in Sind* ; and it may have been this species 

 which Gmelin observed on the Caspian in 1770, and which 

 he identified with the " Porphyrio " of ancient writers. 



Under these circumstances it would appear that the earliest 

 name that can be employed for the Porphyrio of the Spanish 

 peninsula and Algeria is cceruleus, under which name it was 

 shortly described by Dominico Vandelli in 1797 in his " Florae 

 et Faunse Lusitanicse Specimen "f, and that the species should 

 stand as Porphyrio cceruleus (Vandelli). 



XVII. — On a Collection of Birds from the Sierra Nevada of 

 Santa Maria, Columbia. By Osbert Salvin and F. 

 DuCane Godman, 



At the commencement of last year Mr. F. Simons under- 

 took to make an expedition for us to explore the Sierra 

 Nevada of Santa Marta, in Columbia, with the object of 

 making collections in various branches of natural history. 



* Cf, Hume, * Stray Feathers/ iv. p. 20. 



t Published in Tol. i. of the 'Memorias da Acadeniia Real de Lisboa,' 

 Liabon, 1797. As to the occurrence of this species in Portugal, cf. A. 0. 

 Smith, Ibis, I8t)8, p. 455. 



