1873.] OF THE ETHIOPIAN REGION. till 



the head and hinder neck scarcely glistening and shaded with 

 greyish, as also is the side of the face ; cheeks, throat, and ear- 

 coverts cindery grey, a little incliuing to whitish on the chin ; wings 

 and tail purple and violet, like the back ; lower parts of bodv deep 

 grey, with a faint reflexion of steel-blue ; bill yellow ; space "round 

 eye turqoise-blue ; iris dark red. Total length 12 inches, culmen 

 1-1, wing 4-5, tail 77, tarsus 1-15. 



Young. Altogether duller in colour than the adult, and every- 

 where more greyish, with less metallic lustre. The under parts are 

 grey, paler on the throat ; under mandible brownish. 



Hah. Senegal 1 (Hartlaub) ; Sierra Leone (Afselius) ; Fantee 

 (Ussher, Blissett) ; Cameroons (Crossley) ; Fernando Po (Fraser) ; 

 Gaboon {Walker) ; Ogobai, Rembo, and Moonda rivers (Du 

 Chaillu) ; Angola (Monteiro). 



I strongly suspect that there are two species confounded still 

 under this name ; for I find that all the birds from Fantee have dark 

 purplish-blue tails, while the more southern birds from Cameroons, 

 Gaboon, and Fernando Po are more green everywhere, but espe- 

 cially on the upper tail-coverts and tail. One bird collected in 

 Fernando Po by Mr. Fraser is remarkable for its light ash-coloured 

 head and breast. My reason for not separating these birds is that 

 I have one specimen from Gaboon with a purplish tail and another 

 with a greenish one, so that after all it may be a sexual distinction. 

 On the other hand, I must have seen at least twenty specimens 

 from Fantee, all of which had purple tails, and that the difference 

 is not caused by age is proved by young and old birds in my col- 

 lection which have the tails exactly alike. The young bird described 

 is one of Du Chaillu's specimens ; and the description of the adult 

 is taken from a nicely prepared skin given me by my friend Mr. 

 Bhssett, whose collector procured it in Denkera, in January 1872. 



Dr. Hartlaub, in his work on the birds of Western Africa 

 (p. 189), states his opinion that there is no specific difference 

 between C. australis of South Africa and the bird from Western 

 Africa, which is the true C. aeneus of Vieillot founded on Levaillant's 

 plate. Again, in the great work by Dr. Finsch and himself on the 

 ornithology of Eastern Africa, the two species are united, the 

 synonymy of the green and blue-tailed birds beiug, however, kept 

 distinct. In both these works the statement is made that examples 

 of both forms occur in Southern and Western Africa. I must say, 

 on the other hand, that among the numbers of Ceuthmochares I 

 have seen, the differences in colour are coincident with locality, and 

 unfailingly so. C. aeneus is rather smaller than C. australis, and 

 has a slightly more curved bill, as Professor Schlegel has remarked : 

 the principal differences, however, are the green tail and yellowish- 

 white throat of the South-African bird, as distinguished from the 

 violet tail and greyish throat of C. aeneus. Prof. Schlegel has like- 

 wise pointed out the russet tint on the belly noticed in one of my 

 own specimens ; and this, though probably existing only in mature 

 birds, may yet prove to be another specific character. 



39* 



