that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 439 



characters, has inclined me to arrange the birds of which I speak, 

 provisionally among the Piprida, 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 Sylviada, 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 Hylophiliis, 

 Temm. of the New World, and the lora, 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 



latter 



