276 IVIr. R. B. Sharpe on the Kingfishers of South Africa. 



the synonymy of the South-African Kingfishers ; and I therefore 

 beg leave to contribute a few lines on the subject of these 

 interesting birds. It will be, I am sure, the aim of every orni- 

 thologist to assist Mr, Layard in making the second edition of 

 his work (which it is to be hoped that the success of the first 

 edition will soon render necessary) as perfect as possible ; and as 

 the book gets better and better known, a great many of the 

 mistakes in synonymy, unavoidable chiefly from the small 

 amount of bibliographical material at the author^s command, 

 will be set right. I trust therefore that, with this object in 

 view, my paper may prove a not unworthy supplement to Mr. 

 Gurney's excellent commentary, which has already appeared in 

 ' The Ibis ; ' but I cannot conclude these introductory remarks 

 without expressing my obligations to my friend Dr. Otto Finsch, 

 of Bremen, who has very kindly favoured me with a proof-sheet 

 of the account of the Alcedinida in the forthcoming work on 

 East-African Ornithology by Dr. Hartlaub and himself; and 

 on his recent visit to England he examined, with me, several 

 difficult questions connected with African Kingfishers, which we 

 now hope to have finally settled. His intimate acquaintance 

 with the Ornithology of the Ethiopian region has been of the 

 utmost service to me. 



The numbers prefixed to the names of the species in the pre- 

 sent paper are those of Mr. Layard's book, as I have thought it 

 best to refer to the various species in the order employed by him, 

 while I endeavour to correct the mistakes in the observations I 

 make on each bird. 



98. Halcyon senegalensis. 



This species has been inserted by Mr. Layard on the authority 

 of specimens procured by Mr. Ayres on the Monocusi River 

 in Natal (Ibis, 1865, p. 265). But as Mr. Gurney has al- 

 ready shown (Ibis, 1868, p. 265), the original notice is not 

 properly referable to H. senegalensis, but to H. cyanoleuca (Vieill. 

 Nouv. Diet. xix. p. 401, 1818), a species I had the pleasure of 

 rediscovering by means of this very bird, which was kindly lent 

 me by the Rev. H. B. Tristram, to whom Mr. Gurnty had given 

 it. 



