DA VAL—DEMOISELLE 133 
= 
DAYAL, or more correctly, it would seem, DHY AL (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 Linneeus, and Copsychus saularis of modern orni- 
thology, whose plumage, black and white in the male, made 
Edwards call it the “Little Indian 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 Yurdidx 
(THRusH) or Sylviide (WARBLER), nevertheless a recent writer (Cat. 
B. Br. Mus. vii. p. 60) has plunged the genus Copsychus into the 
cesspool which he calls 7imeliidx, 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 Copsychus, and among them may be men- 
tioned the African Cercotrichas, and Cittocincla of the Indian Region, 
of which C. 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 Grus or Anthropoides* virgo, otherwise called the 
Numidian CraANg, 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 
1 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, pls. xvii. xviii.), it was sup- 
~ posed by Levaillant (Ozs. d’ Afr. iii. p. 50) to refer to the ordinary instrument for 
ascertaining the time of day, and by him was accordingly rendered Cadran. Sub- 
sequently Jerdon asserted (B. India, ii. p. 116), that Linneus, thinking it had some 
connexion with a sun-dial, called it ‘‘ solaris, by lapsus pennex, saularis.” Herein 
Jerdon was misled, for the epithet applied by Linneus is but the Latinized form of 
‘*Saulary,” the name under which a cock and hen were sent from Madras by E. 
Buckley to Petiver, who first described the species (Ray, Synops. Meth. Avium, p.197). 
2 Buffon, Hist. Nat. Oiseaux, iii. p. 247; v. p. 487, note, and vii. pp. 313-316. 
3 The Natural History of Animals . . . dissected by the Royal Academy of 
Sciences at Paris (London : 1702, pp. 205 et seqq.) 
4 This name was given by Vieillot, following a misapprehension of the French 
Academicians, Du Vernay 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, Gardens and Menagerte of the Zoologi- 
cal Society, ii. pp. 231, 232. 
