BRACHYGALBA SALMON!. 



SALMON'S JACAMAE. 

 PLATE XIII. 



BracJiygalba salmoni, Scl. et Salv. P. Z. S. 1879, p. 635. 



^neo-viridis, pilei plumis fusco adumbratis ; gutture toto et remigum mai'ginibus internis ad basin albis ; 

 ventre medio et crisso castaneis; rostro nigro^ pedibus fuscis : long, tota 7'2, alas 2'8, caudae 2'S, rostri 

 a rictu 1*8. 



Hab. in Statu Antioqnise reipubl. Columbianse. 



The late Thomas Knight Salmon, after whom this Jacamar is called, was brought up as a 

 mechanical engineer in the works of the London and North-Western Eailway Company at 

 Wolverton, and was for some years foreman of an engineering establishment at Guildford. 

 Being compelled to abandon his profession from delicacy of the lungs, he devoted himself to 

 natural history, to which he had always shown a great liking from boyhood, and opened a 

 naturalist's shop at Guildford. After some years passed here, Mr. Salmon's health rendering it 

 necessary for him to seek a milder climate, he proceeded in 1870 to Medellin, the capital of the 

 State of Antioquia, U. S. of Colombia, where, for seven years he was more or less continuously 

 resident, in the service of the State Government as engineer. But Mr. Salmon's heart was in 

 the wilds-, and he devoted the whole of his leisure time to collecting-excursions to different 

 places round Medellin, where extensive collections of mammals, birds, insects, and other objects 

 were made and forwarded to his agent in this country, Mr. Edward Gerrard, jun. Mr. Salmon's 

 collections of birds were very large, numbering some 3500 skins, and formed the subject of a 

 memoir by myself and Mr. Salvin, which was read at the meeting of the Zoological Society of 

 London on the 3rd of June 1879. 



Among the fourteen new species of birds, for our knowledge of which we are indebted to 

 Mr. Salmon's energetic researches, and of which a list is given in the memoir above referred to, 

 few are perhaps of greater interest than the present Jacamar, which Mr. Salvin and I have 

 proposed to dedicate to the memory of its discoverer. Although closely allied to Goring's 

 Jacamar, it is, I think, without doubt a distinct species, readily distinguishable by the extension 

 of the green of the back over the head and front, instead of these parts being of an earthy 

 brown. It is likewise a near relative of BracJiygalba luguhris, but is easily known from that 

 species by its white throat. 



Mr. Salmon obtained both his examples of this Jacamar (the only individuals of the species, 

 so far as I know, yet received in Europe) during one of his excursions from Medellin to the Kio 

 Neche, to the north of that city. The Rio Ncche or Nechi is a confluent of the Rio Poru, a 

 branch of the Magdalena, which it enters at Dos Bocas; and Mr. Salmon's collecting-place was, 



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