G4 Mr. Vigors's Sketches in Ornithologi/. v 



detail and complete the picture is not permitted us amidst the- 

 poverty of our resources. For that purpose it is necessary to have 

 recourse to the foreign storehouses of nature, which, to the 

 shame of this nation be it spoken, overflow with the treasures of 

 those countries which England might once have considered ex- 

 clusively at her command. 



It is not easy to decide, although we may form a probable con- 

 jecture on the subject, how many, and which of the foregoing 

 species of Palceornis were known to the ancients. ./Elian ex- 

 pressly tells us that they were acquainted with three species.* 

 But as some of the more common sjiecies approach each other 

 most closely in their specifick characters, it is not improbable, 

 that the differences between them might have been passed over 

 by observers who were so little accustomed, and had so little 

 occasion, to pay attention to minute distinctions, and that four or 

 five species at least were familiar to antiquity. The birds that 

 come from the remoter Indian islands, P. Papiiensis^ Malaccensis, 

 and xanthosomiis^ in particular, are in all likelihood among the 

 number of those which have been only known in recent times. 

 To these may of course be added the newly characterized 

 species from New Holland, the P. Barrabandi. The beautiful 

 blossom-headed species also, P. erythrocephalus and Benga- 

 lensis^ which are even now more rarely met with than the 

 neighbouring species, most probably did not come under the 

 observations of the ancients ; for it is improbable that they should 

 have passed over without notice the lovely and changeable roseate 

 colour of the head, which casts into the shade even the collar 

 round the neck so frequently alluded to by them, if either of 

 those birds had been before them. The poets, at least, would 

 have seized upon a character which involved so truly poetick an 

 image, and Ovid or Statins would have woven it up among the most 

 conspicuous wreaths of their beautiful elegiack garlands. P. hitor- 

 quntiis^ the locality of which is unknown, is at present of rare 



* E» Ivdo;r (axv^xvu atrrxaas o^vis yiyes^xiy — Few r^ix a-vruv uy.au' 

 01 Tixvres ob aroi /LtasSoyrej-, us iiSit^is^ §ru xxi xvroi yivovrxt Xx^oi) y.*i 

 (p^eyyoYTxi p^eyiA,x xv^^uirmrA. De Nat. Aniir. Lib. XVI. c. 2. 



