LANIADiE. 119 



that the two middle tail feathers only are black ; but we place no great reliance 

 on this character either way, subject, as it frequently is, to the mere effects of age. 

 So far, therefore, as the original description of Z/udovicianus is concerned, we find 

 no admixture or inconsistency ; it is made by an original writer, who describes 

 only what he sees. We shall now show that upon this account, faultless as it is, 

 all the subsequent errors have been engrafted. On the authority of Brisson, the 

 L. Ludovicianus was included in the Sy sterna Natures (Ed. xiii., Vimb. 1767) ; 

 but, in the specific character, the tail is here first stated to be cinereous (p. 134), 

 instead of partially black. In the Syn. of Birds ([., p. 162), we find Brisson's 

 account accurately abridged ; but, unfortunately, a reference is given to the PL 

 Enl. 397, which represents a Thamnophilus, instead of a true Shrike. The error 

 in the Sy sterna Natures, and the false synonyme in the General Synopsis, are next 

 adopted by Gmelin ; and although we find the latter mistake rectified in the Index 

 Ornithologicus, its author brings in a third species, the Black-crowned Shrike of 

 Pennant, and frames his description so as to make it apply to both, — the " pileus 

 niger " belonging to Pennant's bird ; for Brisson distinctly states that, in his 

 Ludovicianus, " les parties superieures de la tete, du col, le dos, fyc, sont cendrees." 

 All these errors are transferred into the General History of Birds, with an opinion 

 expressed, that the L. Ludovicianus, as there characterized, may be a variety of 

 the same author's L. nengeta (under which he comprises the ardosiaceus of Vieillot) 

 or of the excubitor. 



Before proceeding further, let us remember that we first began to lose sight of 

 the true L. Ludovicianus by an unlucky error in the Sy sterna Natural ; that it 

 became more obscure in Gmelin's compilation ; and that it was finally lost in the 

 Index Ornithologicus, the Ludovicianus of which work and of the General History 

 is an imaginary bird. It shall now be shown that the L. nengeta of the same work, 

 to which its author thinks his Ludovicianus may be referred, as " varieties of each 

 other," is itself an imaginary species ! — composed of three real birds of different 

 Linnaean genera, and also of a fourth, which we have already shown to be fictitious, 

 namely, the ardosiaceus of Vieillot. Referring, therefore, to the synonymes at 

 p. 80 of the work last mentioned, we need only observe that the Grey Pye of 

 Brazil (Edw., pi. 318) is a modern Nengetus and a Linnaean Fly-catcher ; that 

 the Cotinga cinerea of Brisson, as Le Vaillant remarked twenty years ago, is the 

 young of Ampelis pompadoura, L. ; and that the Grey Shrike of Pennant is either 

 the L. excubitor or borealis, loosely assimilated by Pennant with the bird of 

 Edwards. 



