that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 439 
characters, has inclined me to arrange the birds of which I speak, 
provisionally among the Pipride, at the extreme termination of 
the tribe before us. In my present view of the case, the charac- 
ters in which they accord with that family and approximate the 
extreme groups of the preceding tribe, appear to predominate. 
More accurate knowledge on these subjects will clear away these 
and similar difficulties. But I cannot too often insist upon the 
point, that whatever alterations may take place hereafter in our 
ideas respecting the disposition of these subordinate groups, they 
cannot interfere with the general principles which it is the object 
of this inquiry to illustrate. Instead of impugning our general 
views, they will merely remove those doubts on minor points in 
which our present limited acquaintance with nature involves us. 
Proceeding to the Sylviade, the Warblers of our British ornitho- 
logists, we may observe that the family, assimilated to the groups 
we have just quitted in the sweetness and compass of their vocal 
powers, is separated from them chiefly by their more delicate 
structure and more subulate bill. That portion of the Linnean 
Motacilla, or rather of the Sylvia of Dr. Latham, which M. Bech- 
stein has separated from the genus under the title of Accentor, 
in conjunction with that which embraces the S. luscinia, the well- 
known songster of the night, appears to be the group that most 
nearly approaches the Thrushes by the comparative strength of its 
formation. Here also, perhaps, we may find the Hylophilus, 
Temm. of the New World, and the Jora, Horsf. of the East, to be 
united by their stronger bills. Hence, a number of intervening 
groups, among which Brachypteryx, Horsf. may be noticed, and 
that which includes the S. rubecola, the favourite Redbreast of our 
gardens, may not be passed over, conduct us by their gradually 
lessening bill and more slender form, to those birds in which 
the delicate body, the tapering legs, and the gracile and subulate 
bill, point out their typical supremacy in the family. To these 
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