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Show 1873.] OF THE ETHIOPIAN REGION. 611 the head and hinder neck scarcely glistening and shaded with greyish, as also is the side of the face ; cheeks, throat, and ear-coverts cindery grey, a little inclining to whitish on the chin ; wings and tail purple and violet, like the back; lower parts of body deep grey, with a faint reflexion of steel-blue ; bill yellow ; space round eye turqoise-blue; iris dark red. Total length 12 inches, culmen 1*1, wing 4*5, tail 7'7, tarsus 1*15. Young. Altogether duller in colour than the adult, and everywhere more greyish, with less metallic lustre. The under parts are grey, paler on the throat; under mandible brownish. Hab. Senegal ? (Hartlaub) ; Sierra Leone (Afzelius) ; Fantee (Ussher, Blissett) ; Cameroons (Crossley) ; Fernando Po (Fraser) ; Gaboon (Walker) ; Ogobai, Rembo, and Moonda rivers (Du Chaillu); Angola (Monteiro). I strongly suspect that there are two species confounded still under this name; for I find that all the birds from Fantee have dark purplish-blue tails, while the more southern birds from Cameroons, Gaboon, and Fernando Po are more green everywhere, but especially on the upper tail-coverts and tail. One bird collected in Fernando Po by M r . Fraser is remarkable for its light ash-coloured head and breast. M y reason for not separating these birds is that I have one specimen from Gaboon with a purplish tail and another with a greenish one, so that after all it m a y be a sexual distinction. O n the other hand, I must have seen at least twenty specimens from Fantee, all of which had purple tails, and that the difference is not caused by age is proved by young and old birds in m y collection which have the tails exactly alike. The young bird described is one of D u Chaillu's specimens ; and the description of the adult is taken from a nicely prepared skin given m e by m y friend M r. Blissett, whose collector procured it in Denkera, in January 1872. Dr. Hartlaub, in his work on the birds of Western Africa (p. 189), states his opinion that there is no specific difference between C. australis of South Africa and the bird from Western Africa, which is the true C. aeneus of Vieillot founded on Levaillant's plate. Again, in the great work by Dr. Finsch and himself on the ornithology of Eastern Africa, the two species are united, the synonymy of the green and blue-tailed birds being, however, kept distinct. In both these works the statement is made that examples of both forms occur in Southern and Western Africa. I must say, on the other hand, that among the numbers of Ceuthmochares I have seen, the differences in colour are coincident with locality, and unfailingly so. 0. aeneus is rather smaller than C. australis, and has a slightly more curved bill, as Professor Schlegel has remarked : the principal differences, however, are the green tail and yellowish-white throat of the South-African bird, as distinguished from the violet tail and greyish throat of C. aeneus. Prof. Schlegel has likewise pointed out the russet tint on the belly noticed in one of m y own specimens ; and this, though probably existing only in mature birds, m a y yet prove to be another specific character. 39* |