99 
BLUE-COLLARED KINGHUNTER. 
Halcyon torqmtus, Swains. 
Head above, brown ; ears blue, margined by a black line ; 
under plumage white ; breast with a blue bund ; upper 
mandible and feet red ; lower mandible black. 
The only specimen of this new species we have yet 
seen is in the Chatham Museum, to which it was 
sent, with other species, all procured at the Gambia 
settlement. It has obviously been confounded, with 
many others, under the common name of Sene- 
yalensis. At every step which the true ornitho- 
logist takes in the accurate determination of the 
species of birds, the more will he he impressed with 
the conviction that the total destruction of all our 
compiled systems would he the greatest possible 
advantage which the science now could possibly 
receive. The innumerable errors they exhibit in 
almost every page, are copied and recopied by each 
succeeding compiler, who thus gives them a ficti- 
tious authority , so that they actually become perpe- 
tuated from one century to another; while their 
disentanglement, from the truth mixed up with them, 
becomes at last altogether hopeless. With the excep- 
tion of the writings of Brisson, Buffon, Linnaeus, and 
Edwards, we may reject almost every other general 
work upon species as not only useless hut pernicious, 
