Mr. T. Ayres on the Ornithology of Transvaal. 391 



which^ however, appears by the accompanying letterpress 

 to be intended to represent P. capensis. Another inaccuracy 

 in this plate is the tone of colouring of the brown portions of 

 the pkimage, which are represented as much more rufous 

 than they are in nature. A more correct figure of P. ca- 

 pensis has been given by Mr. Dresser in his ' Birds of Europe ;' 

 but the specimens I have seen have the throat not so dark a 

 brown, and the white on the abdomen less extended than is 

 shown in Mr. Dresser's plate. 



I have now before me three specimens of P. capensis, for 

 the loan of which I am indebted to the kindness of Captain 

 Shelley, by whom one of them was shot at Wellington, in 

 the Cape colony, the other two being simply labelled " Cape — 

 Butler.^' 



In all these specimens the eyelids are white, agreeing with 

 the description of this species given in the first edition of 

 Mr. Layard's work, in which the eyelids are spoken of as 

 ^'surrounded by a white fringe," and with " the white eyelid " 

 subsequently ascribed by Mr. Layard to this species iu ' The 

 Ibis ' for 1871, p. 230. 



Captain Shelley, however, in a note which he has been 

 good enough to write to me respecting these birds, says, 

 " The only specimen I shot of P. capensis was at WelHngton, 

 Cape Colony ; the eyelids were black, with a very faint red- 

 dish tinge ;" and I also observe that one of Captain Shelley's 

 other specimens, obtained at the Cape, lias been labelled by 

 the collector, " beak and legs blackish, iris reddish brown, 

 edge of eyelid vine-red." 



It would seem, therefore, that in this species the colour 

 of the eyelid alters and becomes white after the skin has been 

 preserved, as has been already pointed out by Mr. Sharpe at 

 p. 207 of the second edition of Mr. Layard's work. 



The second (and, as it seems to me, quite distinct) species, 

 which has been united to P. capensis in Sharpe's edition of 

 Layard, is P. nigricans of Vieillot, which was founded on 

 Le Vaillant's " Brunoir " (pi. 106. fig. 1) . This figure re- 

 presents a species which, according to Le Vaillant, ^'ne se 

 trouve pas dans les environs du cap de Bonne-Esperance, ni 



2g 2 



