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PALE-WINGED DRONGO. 
Dicrurus canipennis, Swains. 
Glossy blue-black ; tail forked ; quill-feathers with their 
inner-shafts light-grey-brown, their internal surface greyish 
white ; the third quill the longest. 
The Drongo-Shrikes were formerly classed with the 
flycatchers, because, like them they seize their food, 
which consists entirely of insects, upon the wing, 
much in the same manner as do the swallows. All 
the species are restricted, in their geographic range, 
to the warm latitudes of the old world, and what is 
very singular they are all of a black colour. Hence 
the older ornithologists, who were not accustomed 
to pay much attention to variations of structure, 
considered the greater number to be mere varieties 
of one species. Le Yaillant, however, with his 
usual discrimination, was the first writer who rec- 
tified this error ; and he not only described all that 
were then known to him, but collected them into 
a separate genus by the name of Drongo. We may 
retain this appellation in part, and yet adopt the 
more classic one of Dicrurus given to the same 
birds by M. Vieillot, a name which, although not 
prior to that of Edolius, is so peculiarly appro- 
priate, from expressing the double or forked-tail 
