Australian Birds in the Collection of the Linnean Society. 251 
salibus, ovalibus, setis plumulisque ferè obtectis ; rictu vi- 
brissis fortibus hirsuto. 
Ale mediocres subrotundatæ ; remige primá brevi, secundá 
dupló fere longiore, tertià quartà et quintá ferè æqualibus 
longissimis. 
Cauda mediocris, lata, equalis aut interdum subfurcata. 
. Pedes graciles, mediocres ; acrotarsiis scutellatis, scutorum sutu- 
ris vix decernendis. i 
The necessity of subdividing the overgrown Linnean genus of 
Muscicapa has long been acknowledged: and the diffculty of 
seizing upon such characters as will serve to distinguish such 
subdivisions has been equally admitted. Where so much simi- 
larity prevails as in the characters belonging to all the species 
of the truly natural group of Muscicapide, it is only by observing 
the different modifications of the same characters,— by fixing, in 
fact, upon the greater or less developement of them, and not by 
detecting any tangible differences among them,—that we can 
hope to draw such boundary lines between the groups of the 
family as will restrain the number of species contained i in each 
within moderate limits. . 
Hitherto the only material subdivisions that have been insti- 
tuted in this family consist of the genera Platyrhynchus, Desm., 
and Muscipeta, Cuv. The former of these groups includes those 
birds in which the broad and flattened bill, peculiar to the Lin- 
nean Muscicapæ, is carried to the extreme bounds of its de- 
velopement. The breadth, which is nearly equal to that of the 
head, extends nearly the whole length of the bill, which becomes 
narrower only towards the aper. Such a character affords a 
good foundation for a group. The genus Muscipeta does not 
appear to be equally well defined. As it has been latterly 
extended by those ornithologists who have adopted the name of 
2x2 M. Cuvier's 
