DAYAL— DEMOISELLE • 133 



DAYAL, or more correctly, it would seem, DHYAL (corrupted 

 into Dial-bird^), the Hindostani name commonly adopted by 

 Anglo-Indians for one of the loudest-voiced of their songsters, the 

 Gracula saularis of Linnaeus, and Gopsychus saularis of modern orni- 

 thology, whose plumage, black and white in the male, made 

 Edwards call it the "Little Lidian Pye." In Nepal it is kept to 

 exhibit its pugnacity, and a bird that will fight well is highly prized. 

 Its other habits have been recognized by the best ornithologists as 

 pointing to an alliance with the Saxicoline group of Turdidse 

 (Thrush) or SylviidcV (Warbler), nevertheless a recent writer (Cat. 

 B. Br. Mils. vii. p. 60) has plunged the genus Copstjclms into the 

 cesspool which he calls Tinieliidx, with the true members of which 

 it has little in common. The number of species of the genus is 

 doubtful ; but one is certainly peculiar to the Philippine Islands, 

 and another to the Seychelles, while two are found (to say nothing 

 of the barely separable Gervaisia) in Madagascar. Other forms are 

 also very nearly allied to Gopsychus, and among them may be men- 

 tioned the African Gercotrichas, and Gittocmda of the Indian Region, 

 of which G. tricolor, known throughout India by its Hindostani 

 name of Shdma, is a favourite song-bird, and deserves mention. 



DEMOISELLE, a name fancifully given by the French to 

 several kinds of birds -; but the only sense in which it has been 

 used (and that for nearly 200 years ^) by English writers is as 

 applied to the G^'us or Anihropoicles ^ virgo, otherwise called the 

 Numidian Crane, though it is only a winter visitant to any part of 

 Africa ; the range of its breeding-haunts extending from the valley 

 of the Lower Danube eastward through Southern Russia, Turkestan, 

 and Siberia to China. Examples occasionally stray from its proper 

 home and have occurred in Germany, Heligoland, and Sweden ; 

 while two were seen, and one of them shot, in Orkney in May 1863 



^ This phonetic spelling has naturally given rise to a series of mistakes. First 

 used by Albin in 1737 {Suppl. N. H. Birds, i. p. 17, pis. xvii. xviii.), it was sup- 

 posed by Levaillant {Ois. d'Afr. iii. p. 50) to refer to the ordinary instrument for 

 ascertaining the time of day, and by him was accordingly rendered Gadran. Sub- 

 sequently Jerdon asserted {B. India, ii. p. 116), that Linnteus, thinking it had some 

 connexion with a sun-dial, called it "Solaris, by lapsus pennae, saularis." Herein 

 Jerdon was misled, for the epithet applied by Linnreus is but the Latinized form of 

 *' Saulary," the name under which a cock and hen were sent from Madras by E. 

 Buckley to Petiver, whofirst described the species (Ray, Synops. Meth. Avium, p. 197). 



" Bufibn, Hist. Nat. Oiseaux, iii. p. 247 ; v. p. 437, note, and vii. pp. 313-316. 



^ The Natural History of Anir)ials . . . dissected hy the Royal Academy oj 

 Sciences at Paris (London : 1702, pp. 205 et seqq.) 



■* This name was given by Vieillot, following a misapprehension of the French 

 Academicians, Du Veruay and Perrault, whose observations were translated in 

 the work mentioned in the last note. On the questions arising out of the various 

 names assigned to this species, see Bennett, Ga.rdens and Menagerie of the Zoologi- 

 cal Society, ii. pp. 231, 232. 



