308 BLYTH ON THE liRITISH FRUIT-EATING WARBLERS. 



been too often deduced from an examination of dry distorted skins, 

 rather than from the study of the living animals; though even in that 

 case it might have been supposed that the great difference in the make 

 of the bill, and even in the formation of the head, together with the 

 invariably wedge-shaped tails of the aquatic warblers, would certainly 

 have indicated the propriety of separating them from the fruit-eating 

 birds, whenever it was thought necessary to distinguish by different 

 generic appellations the various groups comprised under the old name 

 Sylvia. Subdivisions, however, have been made, although it would be 

 difficult in some instances to discover the characters upon which they 

 were founded : thus we find in Dr. Fleming's generally useful catalogue 

 of British animals, the wood-wren (Sylvia sibilatrix) arranged among 

 the fruit-eating warblers; while the willow- wren (S. trockilus) and the 

 chiffchafF (S. loquax, HERBERT), though so closely resembling it, placed 

 in the genus Regvlus among the gold-crests. Few birds are more 

 similar in their structure and general habits than the whitethroat and 

 the Dartford or furze warbler; yet, in the Supplement to Shaw's 

 Zoology, the latter is made a distinct genus, while the former is 

 arranged, together with the nightingales and the aquatic warblers, 

 in Curruca. 



I have already stated *, in detail, my reasons for making a distinct 

 genus of the nightingales, which I have designated by the name 

 Philomela. The British nightingale, indeed, differs so very con- 

 siderably from our other warblers, in form, in manners, and in habits, 

 that it requires but a single glance at the living birds to perceive at 

 once that such a division is absolutely necessary, if our generic appel- 

 lations are to be confined to those species only whose structure and 

 habits assimilate. The best and most appropriate name that has 

 hitherto been applied to the fruit-eating birds, is the term Ficedula of 

 Aldrovandus. The appellation Curruca (derived from the Latin word 

 curro, to run), cannot with propriety be affixed to any genus of war- 

 blers, inasmuch as they all move forward by hopping; it would there- 

 fore, I think, be better to reject altogether the term Curruca, as 

 objectionable and inappropriate, and to consider the sylvan or fruit- 

 warblers as constituting a genus Ficedula. It would also, perhaps., be 

 as well to observe here, that the expressions " fruit-eating" and " sylvan 

 warblers," which have occurred in the course of the foregoing remarks, 

 are by no means so definite and exclusively applicable to this particular 



* See Field Naturalist's Magazine for May, 



