BUFOUS SWALLOW. 89 



Hiro7idelle Rousseline, 



rousse, or rufuline. Of the French. 



Rotliliche Schwalbe, Of the Germans. 



Rondine di Siberia, Savi. 



Hirondelle de Daurie, Lamarck; in Translation of the Voyages of 



Pallas. 



Specific Characters. — Medium size. Top of the head, back, wings, and 

 tail black; the outer tail feathers for the most part faintly spotted with 

 white; nape rufous, not striated; rump pale rufous, passing into whitish 

 posteriorly; below the cheeks, and under wing coverts, russet, with very 

 narrow brown striae, which are however absent in the anal region; the 

 posterior half of the under tail coverts black; feet moderate size. Length 

 about seven inches; closed wings four inches and four fifths; external tail 

 feathers four inches; tarsi half an inch; posterior toe (without claw) six 

 tenths of an inch; posterior claw about a quarter of an inch. 



This bird has been confounded with several otbers. It was first 

 noticed in modern days by Savi, in 1831, in the "Ornitologia Toscana/' 

 Appendix to vol. i., p. 201, as Hiruudo daurica, Lin. — the Rondine 

 di Siberia. It was afterwards introduced as a European bird in the 

 second edition of Temminclc's Manual, as identical with Hirundo 

 capensis of Gmelin, from which however it is clearly distinct. 

 Temminck proposed for it the name of rufula, which it retained 

 through the many scientific difficulties it encountered after his time. 

 Temminck's reasons for the change of name are hardly defensible. 

 He thought that it was not right to use the word capensis for a 

 European species, and he therefore translated the word rousseline, 

 given to the Cape bird by Le Vaillant, into rufula. The next 

 difficulty it had to encounter was from the Prince of Canino, who, 

 after adopting the name of Temminck in his "List," in 1838, applied 

 the name alpestris in his "Catalogo degli Uccelli Europei," in 1842. 

 In his "Hevue Critique de I'Oavrage de Docteur Degland sur les 

 Oiseaux d'Europe," in 1850, he further adds to the confusion by 

 describing it as a miniature Hirundo senegalensis, although it is at 

 once distinguished from that bird by the black apex of the under 

 tail coverts. He also united it with another distinct bird, the H. 

 melanocrissa, of Riippell. Schlegel, in his "Revue Critique des 

 Oiseaux d'Europe," of 1844, was the first to notice the confusion of 

 the true H. rufula of Sicily with its congeners, namely, H. capensis, 

 H. alpestris, (daurica,) H. senegalensis, arid H. striolata. 



Keyserling and Blasius, in "Die Wirbelthiere Europas," 1840, 



VOL. IV. N 



