90 



YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT. 



throat, breast, and vent, brilliant yellow ; belly, a fainter 

 tinge of the same colour ; inside coverts of the wings, also 

 yellow ; tips and inner vanes of the wings, dusky brown ; 

 tail, cuneiform, dusky, edged with olive green; bill, black, 

 straight, slender, of the true Motacilla form, though the bird 

 itself was considered as a species of thrush by Linnaeus ; but 

 very properly removed to the genus Motacilla by Gmelin ; 

 legs, flesh coloured ; iris of the eye, dark hazel. The female 

 wants the black band through the eye, has the bill brown, and 

 the throat of a much paler yellow. This last, I have good 

 reason to suspect, has been described by Europeans as a 

 separate species ; and that from Louisiana, referred to in the 

 synonyms, appears evidently the same as the former, the chief 

 difference, according to Buffon, being in its wedged tail, 

 which is likewise the true form of our own species ; so that 

 this error corrected will abridge the European nomenclature 

 of two species. Many more examples of this kind will occur 

 in the course of our description. 



YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT.* (Pipra'polyglotta.) 



PLATE VI.— Fig. 2. 



Muscicapa viridis, Gmel. Syst. i. 936.— Le Merle vert de la Caroline, Buffon, iii. 

 396. — Chattering Flycatcher, Arct.Zool.ii. No. 266.— Lath. Synop.iii. 350, 48. 

 — Garrulus Australis, Bartram, 290. —Peale's Museum, No. 6661. 



ICTERIA VIRIDIS.- Bonaparte. 



Icteria dumicola, Vieill. Gal. des Ois. pi. 85, p. 119. — Icteria viridis, Bonap. 

 Synop. p. 69. 



This is a very singular bird. In its voice and manners, 

 and the habit it has of keeping concealed, while shifting and 



* The Prince of Musignano remarks, when speaking of this bird, in his 

 excellent " Observations on the Nomenclature of Wilson's Ornithology," 

 " It is not a little remarkable that Wilson should have introduced this 

 genus in his ' Ornithology.' The bird he placed in it has certainly no 

 relation to the Manakins, nor has any one of that genus been found 

 within the United States. This bird has been placed by authors in half 



