ORNITHOLOGY OF SECTION D, 1850. 
ON A PECULIAR STRUCTURE IN 
THE RECTRICES OF VIDUA PARADISEA (Li9%.) 
By H. E. STRICKLAND. 

ry 
THE group of Ploceine birds which are distinguished by the assump- 
tion, during the breeding season, of greatly lengthened rectrices, and 
to which the generic name Vidua was given by Cuvier, have been in 
more recent times divided into three genera. M. Riippell retained 
the name Vidua for the form of which V. regia (Linn.) is the types 
and proposed the name Colivspasser for another group, typified by 
F. macrocerea, Licht. (C. flaviscapulatus, Riipp.) Mr. G. R. Gray 
proposed a third division, named Chera, for the  Emberiza longi- 
cauda” of Gmelin, distinguished by its longer and more rounded 
wings, in which the fifth primary is the longest, while in the other 
two divisions it is the third that is longest. I am disposed to retail 
all these generic groups as distinct, although they are very closely 
allied to each other, I must remark, however, that M. Riippell has 
founded his genus Coliuspasser on a misconception of its true cha- 
racters. He states, in his “ Neue Wirbelthiere zu der Fauna vol 
Abyssinien gehirig,” that in Vidua it is only the upper tail-covers 
that are lengthened, the rectrices remaining of ordinary length, while 
in Coliuspasser, the true rectrices are extended far beyond the tail- 
covers. The fact however is, that if we carefully examine the tails 
of all these three groups, we shall find that they agree with othet 
Passerine birds, in possessing the normal number of twelve rectrices; 
and that it is by the prolongation of certain of these rectrices, and 
not of the tail-covers, that the Whidah Birds acquire their peculiat 
character. But though Coliuspasser and restricted Vidua agree ™ 
this respect, they are nevertheless well characterized by the different 
modes in which their rectrices are prolonged. In Vidua the four 
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