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. 
Length 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 Evéque 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 
melanocephalus. Subsequently, in 1840, they were des- 
eribed 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. Gené, 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 
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