242 



CUESOEIUS. 



* * 



Suhgeneric group Hemerodromi : with pectoral bands. 



CURSORIUS BICINCTUS. 



LEVAILLANT'S COUBSEB. 



Diagnosis. CuRSORius primariis interioribus secundariisque omnibus pro majore parte castaneis. 



Variations. This is a very variable species, becoming very pale in the west and very small in the east. 



Synonymy. Cursorius africanus, Temminck, Cot. Syst. Cab. d'Orn. pp. 175, 263 (1807). 



Tacbydromus collaris, Vieillot, N. Did. d'Hist. Nat. viii. p. 293 (1817). 

 Cursorius bicinctus, Temmincli, Man. d^Orn. ii. p. 515 (1820). 

 Cursor bicinctus (Temm.), (Vagler, Syst. Av. p. 80 (1822). 

 Cursorius grallatorj Leadbeater, Trans. Linn. Soc. 1825, p. 92. 

 Tacbydromus bicinctus {Temm.), Swainson, Birds West Africa, ii. p. 231 (1837). 

 Rhinoptilus bicinctus [Temm.), Shelley, Ibis, 1882, p. 363. 



Literature. Plates. — Jardine & Selby, 111. Orn. i. pi. 48. 



Habits. — Sbarpe, Layard's Birds S. Africa, p. 654. 



Eggs. — Tbienemann, Abbild. Vogeleiern, pi. Iviii. fig. 3. Examples in Mr. CrowIey^s collection, 

 taken by Atmore in tbe Karroo district of Cape Colony, scarcely differ from eggs of C rufus, 

 except in being much paler in colour. 



Specific 

 characters. 



Levaillant's Chestnut-vi'inged Courser may always be recognized by the chestnut colour 

 of its seco7idaries and of the terminal portion of some of the adjoining primaries. It is 

 essentially a Karroo species, and is found wherever these remarkable plateaus occur in 

 South Africa. From Cradock in the east, up to Kimberley in the north, and then down to 

 Worcester in the west, the railway passes through a country compared with which a 

 Siberian tundra is a paradise. I have never seen anything so hopelessly dreary as the 

 The Karroo. Karroo. Every square yard is indelibly stamped with the two-fold signs of deluge and 

 drought. It is walled in by naked weird hills, generally table-topped, from which every 

 trace of vegetation and soil has been washed away by deluges of rain, leaving only a heap of 

 disintegrating stones, tied together by layers of hard rock. The undulating valleys are bare 

 raud or earth, thinly sprinkled over with dwarf herbs and bushes, seamed here and there 



