_Glossy blue-black, body beneath, and a broad longitudinal band in the middle of the wing, pure white: tail graduated, the three middle feathers black and nearly equal, the three outer suddenly diminishing, and pure white._ Gracula Saularis. _Auctorum._ ---- Naturalists, until of late, were accustomed to pay so little regard to the habits and manners of birds, that of some of the most common species, we know as little now, as we did a century ago. We are in this predicament with the species before us, called the Dial Bird by Albin, whose vague and very questionable account of its manners, has been copied by every succeeding writer. We believe that under the name of Gracula Saularis, two, if not three species are confounded. We doubt Le Vaillants _Cadran_ (Ois. d'Af. pl. 109) being the same as our bird: he distinctly describes and figures the female as _rufous_. Ours, (so labelled), is grey. To us, its natural affinity with the Saxicolæ appears almost unquestionable, but on this point we shall dwell more at length in another place. The curious analogy between this bird and _Petroica bicolor_, has already been mentioned: the plumage of both are precisely alike. It is thus that Nature, ever unfolding some new link of her interminable chain of relations, impresses on the mind the sublimity of that plan, which OMNIPOTENCE alone can fully comprehend. * * * * * * [Illustration: PTILIOGONYS _cinereus_. _female._] PTILIOGONYS cinereus. _female._ ---- Family Laniadæ. Sub-family Ceblepyrinæ. GENERIC CHARACTER. See Zool. Journ. No. 10, p. 164. ---- SPECIFIC CHARACTER. _Head sub-crested; body above cinerous, tinged with grey brown, beneath ferruginous; belly white; under tail covers bright yellow; lateral tail feathers with an internal white band._ Female. Ptiliogonys cinereus. _Cat. of Mex. Mus. App. p. 4. (1824.)_ Ptiliogonys (_not Ptiliogonatus_,) cinereus. _Zool. Journ. No. 10, p. 164. Phil. Mag. and Annals. June 1827, p. 367._ Piroll velauté. _Pl. Col. p. 422._ Mus. Nost. ---- Although not particularly striking in its plumage, this is one of the most interesting birds, to the ornithologist, which has yet been gleaned from the little known regions of Mexico. Closely allied, by its short and broad bill to the Flycatchers, it is principally distinguished from them by the absence of those bristles round the mouth, which almost invariably belong to purely insectivorous birds. Its very short, robust, and feathered tarsi, the profile of the bill, construction of the wing, and even the colouring of the plumage, all remind us of the _Ceblepyrinæ_ or Catterpillar-catchers, and point to that group as containing its true affinities: a group, however, which is in such confusion, that we venture not to hazard any speculations on the precise station of this curious genus.