99 



BLUE-COLLARED KINGHUNTER. 



Halcyon torquatus, SWAINS. 



Head above, brown ; ears blue, margined by a black line ; 

 under plumage white ; breast with a blue band ; upper 

 mandible and feet red ; lower mandible black. 



THE only specimen of this new species we have yet 

 seen is in the Chatham Museum, to which it was 

 sent, with other species, all procured at the Gambia 

 settlement. It has obviously been confounded, with 

 many others, under the common name of Sene- 

 galensis. At every step which the true ornitho- 

 logist takes in the accurate determination of the 

 species of birds, the more will he be impressed with 

 the conviction that the total destruction of all our 

 compiled systems would be the greatest possible 

 advantage which the science now could possibly 

 receive. The innumerable errors they exhibit in 

 almost every page, are copied and recopied by each 

 succeeding compiler, who thus gives them a, ficti- 

 tious authority, so that they actually become perpe- 

 tuated from one century to another; while their 

 disentanglement, from the truth mixed up with them, 

 becomes at last altogether hopeless. With the excep- 

 tion of the writings of Brisson, Buffon, Linnaeus, and 

 Edwards, we may reject almost every other general 

 work upon species as not only useless but pernicious, 



