m 
LONG-TAILED GUARLK, 
Lamprotomis lonr/icanda, Swains. 
PLATE VII. 
Metallic green Lead, glossed with violet-brown ; tail very 
long, graduated, glossed with purple, and banded with nu- 
merous dark lines. 
Le Vert-dore, Le Vaill., Ois. d'Afrique , ii. PI. 87, p. 146. 
PI. Enl. 220 Merida longicanda, Brisson Om. ii. p. 313. 
— Turdus uncus, Gmelin, Auctorum. 
In a group of birds so difficult to determine as the 
present, it becomes more particularly desirable that 
the name of each should not only be appropriate, 
but characteristic of that particular quality or cir- 
cumstance which distinguishes each species. All 
are splendid , shining , and coppery ; and, therefore, 
such names as splendens, nitens, ceneus, chalyheus , &c, 
being applicable to all, become, in fact, of no use 
as specific distinctions. With all our desire to 
preserve standard names, we really think it will be 
advantageous to science that future ornithologists, 
who may have the power of determining what the 
two first of these species really are, should impose 
upon them more appropriate names than those they 
now bear in our systems. In regard to the third, 
the Turdus ceneus of Linnaeus, the prior denomina- 
tion given to it so justly by Brisson, who was its 
