56 BLACK -BELLIED FLYCATCHER. 



paring their accompanying descriptions, the orni- 

 thologist will immediately perceive that they are 

 essentially different, notwithstanding their general 

 similarity in the rufous colour of the back and 

 the glossy hlack of the head and throat. The 

 colouring, in fact, of nearly the whole of this sub- 

 genus is so much the same, that it is not surprising 

 Linnaeus should have looked upon those then known 

 to him as mere varieties of each other. The same 

 excuse, however, cannot be urged for his followers, 

 more especially after the clear and circumstantial 

 details made known by Le Yaillant of the different 

 habits and peculiarities of those he discovered in 

 Southern Africa. And yet so little have modern 

 ornithologists availed themselves of these invaluable 

 memoirs, that up to this day we find them all 

 thrown together under the common name of Mu- 

 scipeta paradisea, which is pronounced to be a 

 " most variable species ;" so that nearly all the types 

 of a genus are thus included under one specific 

 name. As some advancement to a better knowledge 

 of these species, we have subjoined, at the end of 

 this article, the specific descriptions of all those 

 which have been found by Le Vaillant in Southern 

 Africa, and which still remain, as we believe, un- 

 recorded by scientific names or characters, leaving 

 undetermined two or three others which have been 

 but obscurely mentioned in other works. 



We have no information on the natural history 

 of the particular species now under consideration; 

 but as its structure is precisely similar to that of the 



