AXILLA— BABBLER 



25 



fourth species, R. novse hollandim or rubricollis, witli a chestnut head 

 and neck ; but the European it. avocetta extends over nearly the 

 Avhole of middle and southern Asia as well as Africa. 



The proposal {Ibis, 1886, pp. 224-237) to unite the Avosets 

 and Stilts in a single genus seems to have little to recommend 

 it but its novelty, and Avill hardly meet with acceptance by 

 systematists. 



AXILLA (adj. axillary), the arm-pit, whence, or from the 

 adjoining part of the arm, arise in many birds some elongated 

 feathers (axillaries or lower humeral coverts), constituting the 

 hypoptcron. In most water-birds, especially in Numenkis, and Grus, 

 but also in a few others, as Coracias, some of these feathers are 

 very long, straight, and slender. 



B 



Pellorneum. 



Crateropus. 



BABBLER, apparently first used in ornithology in 1837, by 

 Swainson (Glassif. B. ii. 233), for the birds, assigned by him 

 to the subfamily Crateropoclinse, belonging to the genera Pellor- 

 7ietim, Crateropus, 

 Grallina, Malacocer- 

 cus (including as a 

 subgenus Timalia of 

 Horsfield) and Ptero- 

 pitockus (Tapaculo). 

 With the exception 

 of the third and the 

 last these forms are 

 now commonly re- 

 garded as forming part of the Family 

 Timeliidps (often but less accurately 

 vrritten Timaliidai), which no system- 

 atist has yet been able to define 

 satisfactorily, while many have not 

 unjustly regarded it as a "refuge for 

 the destitute" — thrustins; into it a 

 great number of forms, chiefly Oscin- 

 ine, that, with a bill resembling a Cinclorhamphus. 



Shrike's, a Thrush's, or a War- (After swainson.) 



bler's, mostly possess very short and incurved wings, and cannot, 

 in the opinion of some, be conveniently stowed elsewhere. Two 

 volumes (vi. and vii.) of the Catalogue of Birds in tJie British 



