BLYTH ON THK BRITISH FRUIT-EATING WARBLERS. 311 



southern counties : generally speaking, however, this certainly is not 

 a common bird, though it is by no means so rare as it seems usually to 

 be considered. A few pairs breed annually on Wimbledon Common, 

 but a person might traverse that common for months without seeing 

 one, unless he should chance to alight on that particular patch of furze, 

 in which, only, I believe, they are to be found. 



Dr. Fleming divides the sylvan warblers into two sections : those 

 which have the tail of a uniform colour, and those with parti- coloured 

 tails. These sections, to judge from the extremes, are natural enough, 

 the difference being by no means confined to the trivial dissimilarity in 

 their tails ; they differ in the form of the bill slightly, and also in their 

 general habits. To the first of these sections belong the garden warbler, 

 the blackcap, and also, I suspect, the bird figured from memory by the 

 Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert ; in the latter section the babillard, the 

 whitethroat, and the furze warbler are comprised. The division, how- 

 ever, is unnecessary, and of little or no practical use, the characters of 

 each section being so intimately blended in the babillard, the Sylvia 

 sarda, of TEMMINCK, of southern Europe, and several other intermedi- 

 ate species. The three British kinds with parti-coloured tails erect 

 almost constantly the feathers on the crown of the head and throat, a 

 habit which is not observed in the blackcap and garden warbler, which 

 occasionally, but not often, erect the feathers on the crown of the head 

 only. In the three former birds the iris of the eye is of a light colour, 

 being in the whitethroat and furze-warbler of a bright orange yellow, 

 and in the old babillard of a very beautiful pearly white ; in the garden- 

 warbler and blackcap it is of an extremely dark hazel, appearing black 

 unless closely examined. The bill, in the two last-mentioned birds, is 

 stronger made than in the whitethroat and furze-warbler, and better 

 adapted for feeding upon fruit : in the babillard it is of an intermediate 

 form, and the bird is accordingly more voracious after fruit than 

 the whitethroat and the furze-warbler, and less so than the garden- 

 warbler and the blackcap. I have never observed the blackcap to sing 

 whilst flying; the garden-warbler often begins to sing before he alights 

 on a tree, and, like the common wren, contiuues his song when perched ; 

 the babillard does the same, and often repeats his loud note of defiance 

 as he wings his way across a field ; the whitethroat and the furze-war- 

 bler frequently mount a considerable height in the air, with a peculiar 

 vacillating flight, singing all the time, and continuing their song 

 without stopping after they have alighted ; these two birds often sing 

 perched on the topmost twig of a bush, a habit which I have never 



