350 Mr. D. G. Elliot on the 



that it is entitled to specific distinction. The colour of the 

 median tail-feathers, mentioned by Mr. Gould as one great 

 point of difference, does not hold good, as I have seen specimens 

 from St. Thomas with them as dark as can be seen in any ex- 

 ample from St. Domingo ; and the size of the birds from the two 

 islands is not appreciably different. 



Dr. Bryant obtained the species in Porto Rico. 



Lampornis mango. 



Mango-bird, Albin, Birds, vol. iii. p. 45, t. 49. fig. 6. 



Trochilus mango, Linn. Syst. Nat. p. 191, sp. 10 (1766) ; 

 Gmel. Syst. Nat. p. 491 (1788). 



Trochilus poiyhyrurus, Shaw, Nat. Misc. vol. ix. pi. 333. 



Lampornis mango, Gosse, Birds of Jamaica, p. 88 (1847). 



Lampornis po7'phyrurus, Gould, Mon. Troch. vol. ii. pi. Ixxxi. 



Hab. Jamaica. 



This is the species usually known as L. pojyhyrurus of Shaw. 

 Albin, who first gave a description of it, as quoted above, in 

 1740, states that in the year 1701, when he was in Jamaica, he 

 captured, in the dusk of the evening, one of these birds and her 

 nest ; and as the species generally called Lampornis mango is 

 never found in Jamaica, there can be no doubt to which bird 

 Albin referred. Linneeus, in 1766, in his * Systema Nature,' 

 p. 191, gives Lampornis mango, with a short diagnosis that may 

 well apply to this species, and quotes as the first of his synonyms 

 the Mellivora mango of Albin, which is the bird usually mentioned 

 by authors as L. porphyrurus. Whether or not it is correct to 

 consider the synonym first given as the type of the species an 

 author intends to indicate when writing out his list, is in this 

 case of little or no moment ; for as Linnasus thus quotes the 

 species named M. mango by Albin under this appellation, it 

 naturally takes precedence Qi porphyrurus bestowed upon the bird 

 by Shaw many years afterwards. Brisson, in his description of 

 Polytmus jamaicensis, evidently had the bird from the mainland, 

 the L. mango of authors, before him. Linnseus did not discri- 

 minate the difi'erence between the two birds of Albin and Brisson, 

 but confounded them in his synonymy, which Gmelin tried to 

 rectify by making two classes under the same specific name. The 



