BLACK-HEADED JAY. 145 



wing coverts blue, crossed with, transverse lines of black and white ; 

 forehead, throat, and cheeks white; top of the head black. 



Leugth eleven inches and a half; tail five inches and a half. — 

 Gene. 



Somewhere about the year 1837, M. Crolla, a 

 medical man and chemist, attached to Monseigneur 

 Lorano Eveque d'Abido, shot two Jays on the Monto 

 Libano, near Balbeck. He took them to the celebrated 

 Professor Bonelli, of Turin, who declared them to be 

 a distinct species, and gave them the name of Corvus 

 mclanoceplialus. Subsequently, in 1840, they were des- 

 cribed and figured in the "Memoires della Acad, di 

 Torino" under the name of Garrulus melanocephalus. 



Such is the origin of this bird's scientific career, 

 which has now lasted eighteen years, during which time 

 its name, as will be seen by its synonymic biography, 

 has been changed by at least two systematic writers. 

 Fifty or a hundred years hence, when it has attained 

 a long tail of names, some compiler of the ornithological 

 dust and ashes of the past will probably discover that 

 after all it is only a variety of the Common Jay, and 

 consign it, like the Black Jackdaw, to specific oblivion. 



In the meanwhile let us see what are its present 

 claims. Gene, who is a good naturalist and a careful 

 writer, the worthy successor of Bonelli, says of it, "The 

 description I have given of this bird proves its strong 

 affinity with the Common Jay. The colour of the body 

 and its members is absolutely the same, if it were not 

 for the lines, white, blue, and black, which embellish 

 the greater wing coverts. But it is easily distinguished 

 in a positive manner by the colour and relative size of 

 the head. In the Common Jay the forehead and crown 

 of head are white, simply spotted with black. In this 

 species, on the contrary, the forehead is white, but the 



