311 



III. DEGLUBITORES. HUSKERS, 



OR CONIROSTRAL BIRDS. 



The species of Birds that are found in Britain not being 

 sufficiently numerous to afford representatives of all the genera 

 or even families of which the class is composed, it is impossible 

 to present in this work, in a continuous series, satisfactory in- 

 dications of that intertexture of affinities, by tracing which one 

 might acquire some definite idea of the objects w^hich they 

 unite. The great class of Passeres or Insessores of authors is 

 so heterogeneous in its composition, that all who have attempted 

 to characterize it, w^hether in few or in many words, have ut- 

 terly failed ; for this plain reason, that its various groups are 

 as unlike to each other as they are to the Raptores or Rasores, 

 and that, in fact, the only common features which they exhibit 

 are those of the general organization of birds. A Hornbill and 

 a Humming-bird, a Parrot and a Wren, a Kingsfisher and a 

 Swallow, a Starling and a Toucan, not to mention others still 

 more dissimilar, are surely as unlike each other as a Hawk 

 and a Shrike, a Pigeon and a Plover, or a Flamingo and a 

 Pelican. Assuming, therefore, the privilege which every 

 author arrogates, whether comparable to the small Nuthatch, 

 that with much labour bores a little hole in a filbert, or to the 

 Ivory-billed AYoodpecker that demolishes half the bark of a 

 decayed tree in looking for his morning meal, I have thought 

 it not presumptuous to separate the genera of our native birds 

 into large groups or orders, such as, being in a great measure 

 natural, may be readily apprehended by my readers, for whose 



