BLACK-CROWNED BEE-EATER. 



Merops Cuvieri, LB VAILLANT. 



Crown, ears^ and spot on the throat, black, the latter margined 

 below with blue ; chin and stripe over the eye, white ; 

 body above, green ; nape, ferruginous. 



Merops Cuvieri, Le Vaill., pi. 9, Regne Animal, 2d ed. i. 402, 

 note. Merops Savigni, Zool. III., 1st Series, plate 76 Me- 

 rops superciliosus, Var. C. Lath. Hist, of Birds, iv. 228. 



OUR specimens of this very distinct species were 

 received some years ago from Sierra Leone, where 

 it appears to be common, although we know not, at 

 present, whether its range is likewise extended to 

 Senegal. It is the only Bee-eater yet discovered 

 with a white chin and an isolated black crown ; 

 characters which render it so conspicuously distinct, 

 that we can only wonder at its being confounded, 

 even by Linna3an writers, with the Merops superci- 

 liosus. It is clearly the var. C., placed under that 

 name, in Latham's History of Birds. 



When illustrating this species upon a former 

 occasion, we were erroneously informed that it had 

 been named after that inimitably accurate naturalist 

 Savigny, and we accordingly published it under the 

 name of Merops Savigni ; but M. Cuvier, in the last 

 edition of the Regne Animal^ has mentioned it as the 



