Oates, Matabele Land

Matabele Land

Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls.  A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Interior of South Africa.  From the Letters & Journals of the Lates Frank Oates, F.R.G.S.  Edited by C.G. Oates, B.A.

London, C. Kegan Paul & Co.  (1881).  Octavo.

6 chromolithograph and 10 lithograph (A--H, J--K) plates.  There is no "Plate "I"" in the sequence.

Keulemans:  2.

Link to additional plates--https://picasaweb.google.com/mmslouis/MatabeleLandAndTheVictoriaFalls#

Plate A.  Saxicola shelleyi.

This form of chat was first described by R(ichard) Bowdler Sharpe in Edgar Leopold Layard's The Birds of South Africa (part iv, (1877), pp. 246, 819).  A vernacular name "Shelley's Wheat-ear" was also introduced for it.  More recent authors have assigned this name to Myrmecocichla arnotti (Ripley in Mayr and Paynter, Check-list of Birds of the World, Volume X).

Plate B.  Bradyornis oatesii.

Part II of the Appendix of Matabele Land included the section "Ornithology," prepared also by Sharpe (pp. 294--328).  Sharpe first described this species of flycatcher herein (314--315) and introduced a vernacular name for it, "Oates's Wood-Shrike."  More recently, authors have assigned this name to Bradornis (or Melaenornis) pallidus murinus (Roberts, The Birds of South Africa).