254 BRITISH BIRDS. 
The characters of this genus consist in the smallness of the first pri- 
mary, which is less than the primary-coverts, and sometimes apparently 
absent altogether. 
It contains about twenty species, all confined im the breeding-season to 
the Palearctic Region, except one species, which is circumpolar, and two 
nearly allied species, one of which is Nearctic and the other Neotropical. 
Six species are included in the British list, but only two of them breed in 
our islands. Four other species are European. 
The Larks chiefly frequent sandy open plains, and are also found on 
cultivated land, but a few species are more arboreal. They do not perch 
much on trees, but walk and run along the ground with great ease and 
quickness. The Larks furnish a most interesting instance of protective 
colouring, and their plumage harmonizes very closely with surrounding 
objects. Most of the species are fond of dusting themselves. They sepa- 
rate into pairs in spring, but are more or less gregarious in autumn and 
winter. Many species are migratory. They are moderately good 
songsters, and generally sing whilst fluttering in the air, often ascending 
to an immense height. Their flight is powerful, slightly undulatory, and 
performed with rapid beatings of the wings with occasional cessations. 
Their food consists of imsects, worms, and small seeds in summer; but in 
winter they are almost exclusively granivorous. All the species breed on 
the ground, and their nests are slightly made of dry grass, lined with roots 
and of the complicated synonymy of each species which are so characteristic of the author 
of the principal volumes of the ‘ Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum.’ This valuable 
and important contribution to our knowledge of the ornithology of the Ethiopian Region 
is prefaced by a key to the genera of the subfamily Alaudinz, which is elevated to the 
rank of a family, and is subdivided into nofewer than nineteen genera, The so-called 
structural characters on which these genera are based are no more ridiculous than are 
most of the characters which modern ornithologists select in their mania for genus- 
making ; and I only point to this article as a fair illustration of the absurdity of the system. 
Many of the so-called generic characters are not even of specific value, and vary in individuals 
of the same species; others, though true of typical species, do not hold good of the aberrant 
members of the genus ; whilst most of them are of such a trivial nature that it is impossible 
to read them without a smile. The whole key to the genera reads like an ornithological 
jeu esprit. It is scarcely conceivable that generic distinctions founded on the relative 
length of the culmen and the middle toe, or of the crest-feathers and the tarsus, can 
be meant to be taken seriously. Of the seventy or more species of Larks, many are so 
nearly related that they can only be regarded as local races, whilst others have be- 
come specifically distinct; but the whole group is of such recent origin that there has 
not been time for a sufficient number of species to have become extinct to make gaps 
wide enough to be recognized as well-defined natural genera. We may perhaps sepa- 
rate the flat-winged Palearctic Larks from their Preglacial round-winged confréres in 
the Ethiopian and Oriental Regions; but the two groups are connected together by the 
intermediate groups of the Larks which were driven to the confines of these regions 
during the Glacial period. 
