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386 BRITISH BIRDS. 
songsters of greater or less merit. Their nests are built either amongst 
bushes or coarse vegetation, are cup-shaped, and are usually slight struc- 
tures of dry grass-stems, hairs, &c. Their eggs vary considerably in 
number and colour, and will be treated of in detail under the respective 
species. 
The genus Sylvia has been subdivided by various writers into no less than 
eleven genera; but I see no reason whatever to alter the arrangement I 
made in the fifth volume of the British-Museum ‘ Catalogue of Birds.’ 
The only group which might possibly be deserving of generic rank would 
be that containing the Rufous Warbler and its near ally (if, indeed, the 
latter be more than subspecifically distinct) the Grey-backed Warbler. 
It does not seem worth while to make a separate genus to contain only 
one, or at most two, birds, and for which a new generic name would have 
to be invented, as that which has generally been applied to them was origi- 
nally applied to the Nightingale. 
