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Show 286 MR. R. B. SHARPE ON ETHIOPIAN HIRUNDINIDA. [May 12, 3. O n the Hirundinida? of the Ethiopian Region. B y R. B. S H A R P E , F.L.S., Libr. Z.S., &c. I propose in the present paper to give an outline of the African Swallows; and as I possess a very good series of specimens in my private collection, I am induced to hope that these notes may be of some service to the future student of these difficult birds. So slight is at present our knowledge of the different species of Swallows that I cannot expect the present attempt to be by any means perfect, especially as there still remain some few species, of which I have been unable to examine specimens. Nevertheless I venture to hope that the labour bestowed upon it will in some small measure conduce to the benefit of ornithological science, and that it may prove the groundwork on which some more experienced writer may build a surer structure. I have endeavoured to work out the subject in the manner which Messrs. Sclater and Salvin have pursued in their well-known " Synopsis of the American Rallidae" *. A more useful contribution to ornithology has, in m y opinion, never been published ; and were every essay to be prepared in the same accurate and careful manner, the student would have little difficulty in the determination of those species at present so puzzling. It is by no means an easy task to define clearly tangible characters by which the various genera of the Hirundinidee may at once be distinguished. The most efficient treatment of their classification that I have met with is the arrangement proposed by Professor Baird in his ' Review of American Birds;' but from his having chiefly American Swallows to deal with, his conclusions are not always satisfactory when such genera as are strongly represented in the Old World have to be considered. I shall, however, more than once have to express m y indebtedness to his painstaking exposition of the family Hirundinidee, throughout the course of the present paper. It is very curious to note the close affinity of some of the forms found in the African continent with those found in the Nearctic, and more especially the Neotropical, region. As a rule the affinities of Africa are closer to South America; but with the Swallows the opposite is the case, and the balance of relationship is in favour of North America, especially in the instance where a South-African species, Petrochelidon spilodera, is so closely allied to the North-American P. lunifrons, as at first to have been mistaken for it. As in the New World, so in Africa a group of rough-winged Swallows is found; and so different in form are these from all the other Hirundinidee that it is proposed to separate them as a separate subfamily, Psali-doprocnince, to include the African genus Psalidoprocne and the American genus Stelgidopteryx. Hitherto all authors on African ornithology have included among the Hirundinidee one or more species of Atticora ; but this genus, I * P. Z S. 1868, p. 442. |