KEMARES ON THE GENUS IORA. 421 



yellow; the tail is dark green; the legs are black. It is an in- 

 habitant of North America : it somewhat resembles the Pine 

 Warbler." 



The Pine Warbler of Vieillot, I may note, is Hehninthophaga 

 pinus, L. VieilL, Ois. Am., Sept., II, 44. 



Now, admitting that the habitat has been, as was not uncom- 

 mon in those clays, wholly wrongly given, the above description 

 will not apply to any known species of Iora. None has the 

 upper surface u yellowish green, inclining to brown," and none 

 has " a wing bar" in all the known species and races there 

 are none, or two, * and in no species can the tail, I think, be 

 fairly called dark green. 



On this species, according to Gray (Cat. Gen. and Sub. Gen. 

 B., Brit, Mus., 39) and others, Vieillot, in 1815-16, founded his 

 genus jEgithina. 



Here again I have not access to the original definition, but 

 Sfeph. Gen. Zool. XIII., 232, thus translates it : — 



" Beak, elongated, rather stout, more or less arched and deflex- 

 ed, cyliudric, emarginate towards the tip. 



Wings short; the first quill shorter than the second." 



The latter part of the definition could scarcely have been 

 used in regard to Ioras, which have the first quill about half 

 the length of the second, the second very conspicuously shorter 

 than the third. Nor is the definition of the bill satisfactory. 



The case, therefore, on the hypothesis that leucoptera is the 

 type, stands thus : — The professed type of the genus and its only 

 species is unknown, and does not agree with any known 

 Iora, and it is next to impossible that any species of true 

 Iora, known to Vieillot, should not be known to us. 



The definition of the characters of the genus is unsatisfactory 

 and insufficient, and by no means agrees even in all the few 

 particulars given with Iora. 



It seems to me needless to say that, under these circumstances, 

 JEgithina could not possibly, under the B. A. Code, supersede 

 Iora. 



But the case has another aspect. Sundevall, in his Critique of 

 Levaillant's Oiseaux d' Afrique, tells us that, Plate 141, of Le 

 Quadricolor, which name Vieillot adopted as a specific name 

 (Enc. Meth., 481), and which unquestionably represents the 

 Southern or zeylonica or multicolor race of tiphia, was the type 

 of Vieillot's genus vEgithina in his analysis. 



If this were the case, then without question JEgithina must 

 supersede Iora. 



* Except in some cases, where the Southern Indian males, when in full breeding plu- 

 mage, lose the white tips to the greatest coverts and with these the second bar, but 

 this is never the case, except when the bird is black above. 



