ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES 
By H. E. STRICKLAND. 

ON THE TYPE OF THE GENUS DULUS, Visr11. 
Two yery distinct forms have been hitherto confounded under the 
genus Dulus of Vieillot. Both are natives of the island of St. 
Domingo, whose Ornithology was far better known near a century 
ago, when Brisson wrote, than it has been of late years, when war 
and barbarism have expelled science from its shores. The difficulty 
of procuring specimens from that island, has been the cause of the 
confusion in question, and of the length of time that it has remained 
uecorrected. Some specimens, which Mr. G. R. Gray obligingly 
showed me at the British Museum, have however enabled me to 
clear up the matter. 
Brisson, in his Ornithologie, described and figured a bird under 
the name of “ Tangara de S. Dominique,” which was also figured 
in Buffon’s Planches Euluminées, pl. 156, f. 2, and which Linnzeus 
denominated Tanagra dominica. Brisson informs us, that this bird 
was called in St. Domingo “ Esclave” or Slave, a name which 
Buffon adopts in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. In 1816, 
Vieillot, in his Analyse d’Une Nouvelle Ornithologie Elémentaire, 
established his genus Dulus, defining the characters of the bird in 
question, and quoting it as the type of the genus, under the name of 
“ Tangara esclave, Buff.” Thus far there was no ambiguity in the 
matter. But Vieillot had himself been in St. Domingo, and had 
observed the bird frequenting the palm trees of that island. Hence, 
‘in an evil hour, he was induced to change the Linnean specific 
name of dominicus to palmarwm, and describes the bird as Dulus 
palmarum in the Nouveau Dictionnaire d’'Hist. Nat. vol, x. p. 435. 
Now it happened, that there was already a Tanagrine bird, named 
“Le Palmiste” by Brisson, and Turdus palmarwm by Linneus, 
which had nothing whatever to do with the Dulus dominicus. The 
similarity of the specific names, however, induced some authors to 
unite the “ Turdus palmarum’’ of Linnzus with the Dulus palmarum 
of Vieillot, and the mistake was the more readily adopted, as both 
these birds are found in St. Domingo. A moment’s glance, however, 
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