OF WESTERN AFRICA. 
genous to West, as well as also to North-east Africa, are only 
represented in the South by an analogous species, as for example, 
Merops nubicus and bullockii, the southern representatives of 
which are evidently M. nubicoides and bullockoides. The Psit- 
tacus levaillantii, indigenous to South Africa and Abyssinia, is 
identified by an exceedingly nearly allied species, P. pachyrhyn- 
chus, in Senegambia. ‘That a great many species of birds of the 
west coast are migratory, has been lately fully confirmed by Cc. 
A. Gordon, in Jardine’s ‘* Contributions to Ornithology for 1849.” 
A very valuable notice is to be found there, of about thirty birds, 
observed and collected by Gordon at Cape Coast. What makes 
this paper particularly interesting, is, that an account of the habits 
_of the birds of Western Africa is communicated therein, the first 
and only one of any importance we can at present remember. 
If we cast a glance on the special distribution of the single 
orders in Western Africa, the birds of prey are tolerably nume- 
Tous; among them we meet with the rare and interesting genera 
Gypohieraw and Chelictinia, the latter an analogous form of the 
American Elanoides. he strikingly small representation of the 
Vultures, a family which, by the numbers and size of individuals 
of their numerous race, fill an important place in African zoology; 
must be due to the want of high open rocky mountains, as well 
as of steril plains in Western Africa, both of which form the 
favourite place of residence of birds of the Vulture species in other 
Tegions of this part of the world, 
Of the great order Passeres, about 300 species are known in 
Western Africa. The genera Coracias, Alcedo (L), and Merops, 
ae characteristic by their number of species and richness of colour, 
the latter by certain species of remarkable beauty (M. gularis, Sh.) 
Haleyon acteon, a bird not very rare at Sierra Leone, lives equally 
numerous on the Cape de Verd Island St. Jago. (Forster, Darwin, 
Bemet). Of the Nectarinie, Western Africa possesses about 
twenty species peculiar to it. The remarkable occurrence of a 
Species of Pitta, P. angolensis, has already been mentioned. Among 
the remaining birds of the Thrush species, the genus Trichophorus, 
‘mong the Muscicapide, the genera Muscipeta and Platysteira 
Come in the foreground as characteristic. A remarkable species of 
this family is that described by Vieillot, as Platyrhynchus musicus, 
ae Angola, correctly raised by Lesson to the rank of a 
