AXILLA—BABBLER 25 
fourth species, f. nove hollandix or rubricollis, with a chestnut head 
and neck; but the European f. avocetis extends over nearly the 
whole of middle and southern Asia as well as Africa. 
The proposal (Jdis, 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 will 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 (azillaries or lower humeral coverts), constituting the 
hypopteron. In most water-birds, especially in Numenius, and Grus, 
but also in a few others, as Coracias, some of these feathers are 
very long, straight, and slender. 
B 
BABBLER, apparently first used in ornithology in 1837, by 
Swainson (Classif. B. ii. 233), for the birds, assigned by him 
to the subfamily Crateropodiny, belonging to the genera Pellor- 
neum,  Crateropus, 
Grallina, Malacocer- 
cus (including as a 
subgenus 7imalia of 
Horsfield) and Ptero- 
ptochus (TAPACULO). 
With the exception 
of the third and the 
last these forms are 
-now commonly re- 
garded as forming part of the Family 
Timelidx (often but less accurately 
written Zimaliidzx), which no system- 
atist has yet been able to define 
satisfactorily, while many have not 
unjustly regarded it as a “refuge for 
the destitute”—thrusting into it a 
great number of forms, chiefly Oscin- 
ine, that, with a bill resembling a . CINCLORHAMEHUS. 
SHRIKE’s, a THRUSH’S, or a WAR- Nee aoa ge 
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 the British 
PELLORNEUM. 
