1866.] ON THE MUSCICAPA IVIELANICTEEA OF GMELIN. 35 



and when we consider the nnmber of Malabar species that also exist in Ceylon, the supposed 

 Travancore origin of Mr. Gould's type is not an insuperable objection to such a reduction. I 

 also see that Mr. Gray, in his ' Genera of Birds,' keeps B. gularis, Gould, and B. rubineus, Jerd., 

 distinct, while Sundevall malies B. gularis, Gould, a synonym of Le Cap Negre. 



In a synopsis of the Brachypodince, published in the ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ' 

 (for 1845), Mr. Blyth had adopted Dr. Jerdon's view of the identity of the two species ; in Ibis, ISflG, 

 this he was followed by Prince Bonaparte in the ' Conspectus.' And in the ' Birds of India ' P- - • 

 Dr. Jerdou has continued to regard them as identical, but for no better reason, so far as I can 

 discover, than his original surmise above mentioned. A year later Mr. Blyth, in the same 

 journal, gave a description of a specimen he had received from Ceylon, evidently, by his account, 

 identical with the Cap Negre. To this species, while extremely doubtful whether it might not 

 prove to be the female of B. rtihineus, Jerd., he gave the provisional name of abermns. In the 

 ' Catalogue of the Calcutta Museum,' Mr. Blyth correctly reduced this name to a synonym of 

 ^. atricapilla, Vieill., thus ceasing to regard it as a female bird ; at the same time he allowed 

 Dr. Jerdon's rubineus to rank as a distinct species. In his ' Ornithology of Ceylon ' Mr. Layard 

 recorded it as Pycnonotus atricapillus. In the Supplement to the ' Genera of Birds ' Mr. Gray 

 gave the specific name of monaclms to Vieillot's yEgithina atiicapilla, and made it a Pants ; and 

 Prince Bonaparte, in 1854, made the same species the type of his genus Meropixus, he having 

 previously erroneously referred it to Swainson's African genus Parisoma. 



But long before Le Vaillant published his plate and description of Le Cap Negre, Brown 

 had figured and described a bird, procured in Ceylon by Governor Loten, under the name of the 

 "Yellow-breasted Flycatcher." His words are these: — "Head and cheek black. Back and 

 coverts of wings cinereous brown, dashed with yellow. Primaries and tail dusky, edged with 

 pale yellow. Breast and belly of a fine yellow." The figure, although wretched in an artistic 

 sense, repesents a yellow bird with a black head and black cheeks, and with white tips to the 

 under surface of the rectrices. Ui^on this figure Gmelin founded his Muscicapa melamctera, 

 a species we find admitted by many subsequent authors, but by none identified. Prince 

 Bonaparte, as far as I have been able to discover, is the first author who referred it to a known 

 species ; and he, singularly enough, made it a synonym of Gmelin 's Motacilla {lora) zeylanica. 

 Now this species was also founded by Gmelin on one of Brown's figures, the " Ceylon Black- Ibis, 1806, 

 cap " of his ' Illustrations ; ' and, apart from the extreme improbability of Brown having ^' 

 described and figured the same bird twice over in the same volume, or that Governor Loten, 

 a good naturalist, should have regarded specimens of the same species as belonging to two 

 diff'erent species, the figures and descriptions do not agree with one another. The figure of the 

 " Ceylon Blackcap " represents that bird with yellow cheeks, while that of the " Yellow-breasted 

 Flycatcher " represents them as black. In the first bird the two characteristic white alar bars 

 of lora zeylanica are distinctly shown ; in the other the wing is uniform in colour. Lastly, 

 the white terminal caudal markings represented in the figure of the "Yellow-breasted Flycatcher " 

 distinguishes it at once from /. zeylanica. It must be borne in mind that it is universally 

 admitted that Brown's " Ceylon Blackcap " is an lora. If we compare the two descriptions, we 

 find internal evidence which makes it impossible to believe that they are taken from the same 

 species. Brown's description of the " Yellow-breasted Flycatcher " agrees in all respects with 



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