60 
GARRULUS STELLERI. 
induced him to part with entirely, to have them drawn, 
engraved, and published on this side of the Atlantic. It 
is the frequent exercise of similar disinterestedness in 
the promotion of scientific objects, that has procured 
for Mr Leadbeater the distinction with which he is 
daily honoured by learned bodies and individuals. 
The Steller’s jay is one of those obsolete species 
alluded to in the preface to this volume. It is men- 
tioned by Pallas as having been shot by Steller, when 
Behring’s crew landed upon the coast of America. It 
was first described by Latham from a specimen in Sir 
Joseph Banks’s collection from Nootka Sound, and on 
his authority has been admitted into all subsequent 
compilations. The species is indeed too well charac- 
terized to be doubted, and appears moreover to have 
been known to Temminck, as it is cited by him as a 
true jay in his Analysis of a General System. Never- 
theless, adhering strictly to our plan of not admitting 
into the Ornithology of the United States any but such 
as we had personally examined, we did not include this 
species either in our Catalogue, or Synopsis, of the 
birds of this country ; and it is but recently that Mr 
Leadbeater’s specimen has enabled us to add it to our 
list. 
In elevating our subgenus Garrulus to the rank of a 
genus, we merely conform to the dictates of nature ; in 
this instance coinciding with Temminck, whose inten- 
tion it is, as he informs us, to include in it the jays and 
magpies, leaving the name of Corvus for those species 
which are distinguished by their black plumage, and 
short and even tails. These birds are on every account 
well worthy of this distinction, and we cheerfully adopt 
an arrangement which we deem consonant with nature : 
but we cannot agree to the change of termination 
{ Garrula ) which he has attempted to introduce, under 
the pretence that his genus is more extensive than the 
genus Garrulus of former authors. That genus was, in 
fact, formed by Brisson, and afterwards by Linne, 
united with Corvus . This latter genus of Linne cer- 
tainly contained within itself the constituents of several 
