ON THE 



SPECIES OF HYPSIPETES 



INHABITING 



MADAGASOAE AND THE NEIGHBOUEING ISLANDS. 



By ALFRED NEWTON, M.A., F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., &c. 



(Plate XLII.) 



Among the many features which the fauna of Madagascar and its neigh- 

 bouring islands has in common with the Indian Region there are perhaps few 

 whereby the connexion by land, which we may almost certainly assert to 

 have once existed between those now distant localities, is better shewn than 

 by the presence in the former, and there alone in the Ethiopian Region, of 

 certain members of the forest-haunting genus Hypsipetes. These are four in 

 number, and closely resemble each other — so much so, that their distinctions 

 may be easily overlooked without careful inspection. It may therefore be 

 agreeable to ornithologists that these differences should be concisely pointed 

 out, and the history of each form given in a connected way. 



Two of the birds of which it is my business here to treat were known 

 to and figured by the ornithologists of the last century. Brisson* and, after 



^ Ornithologie, ii. pp. 291, 293. 



