GENERIC CHARACTER.
Bill straight, convex, slightly incurvate: mandibles notched: nostrils covered with bristles: tongue acute, cartilaginous, bifid: middle toe connected at the base to the outer one.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER
AND
SYNONYMS.
Cærulean blue: neck beneath violet: quill and tail feathers black, edged with blue.
Ampelis Cayana: nitida cærulea, collo subtus violaceo. Linn. Syst. 1. p. 298. 6.—Gmel. Syst. 1. p. 840.
Ampelis Cayana: nitida cærulea, collo subtus violaceo remigibus rectricibusque nigris cæruleo marginatis. Lath. Ind. Orn. 1. 365. 3.
Cotinga Cayanensis. Briss. 2. p. 344. 32. t. 34. f. 3.
Lanius Ococolin. Klein. av. p. 54. 6.—Seba. ii. p. 102. t. 96. f. 3.
Cotinga de Cayenne, Quereiva. Buff. 4. p. 444.—Pl. Enl. 624.
Purple-Throated Chatterer. Lath. Syn. 3. p. 95. 3.
The Purple-Throated Chatterer is assuredly one of the most beautiful of the feathered race, at present known; the general colour of the plumage, a blue of most transcendant brightness, and highly changeable, varying from a fine cærulean, or azure, to a green of equal delicacy and beauty. There is an intermixture of black disposed in spots throughout; one half of each feather, from the base, being black, and only the tips blue, so that the plumage appears more or less spotted with black, as the feathers are ruffled or misplaced from their natural position. The region of the chin and throat is of a beautiful crimson purple, whence its name of Purple-Throated Chatterer. The greater wing coverts are black, varied and spotted with blue: the quills and tail black with blue margins: the bill black with the lower mandible rather paler: the legs black.
This brilliant species of the Ampelis tribe has been sometimes denominated the Ultramarine Thrush, and not unfrequently the Ultramarine Starling: its size resembles that of the Starling, and there is also a general similitude in its form and manners, but it is, nevertheless generically distinct.
Inhabits Cayenne, and probably some other parts of South America.
15
London. Published as the Act directs, by E. Donovan & Mess.rs Simpkin & Marshall Aug.st 1, 1822.