35 
SMALL BILLED ORIOLE. 
Oriolus Irachyryndius, Swains. 
Above, greenish ; beneath, yellow ; head and throat, black ; 
spurious wings with a white spot ; four middle tail-feathers, 
green ; bill short, the culmen arched. 
We have already called the attention of our readers 
to the singular uniformity of colour which some- 
times pervades the different species of a’ natural 
group of birds, so as to render their determination 
very difficult. Among the drongo shrikes, the pre- 
dominant colour is black, while in Oriolus, the 
genus now under consideration, the plumage of 
nearly all is black and yellow. 
So closely does the species, now to be described 
for the first time, resemble that figured by Le 
Vaillant under the name of Le Loriot Coudougnan, 
that if we had not possessed this latter also, we 
should most certainly have considered them the 
same. Le Vaillant’s descriptions are the best of 
the period in which he wrote, hut he seldom gives 
measurements, and very often overlooks those nice 
hut discriminative characters which are now found 
to be absolutely essential. The two species, in 
point of fact, are coloured precisely alike, except in 
their tail-feathers, while they differ materially in 
