274 EE MCAT GEER 
and for the same reason only a very few of the forms of Flycatchers 
(which, after all the deductions above mentioned, may be reckoned 
to include some 60 genera or subgenera, and perhaps 250 species) 
can be even named.* 
The best known bird of this Family is that which also happens 
to be the type of the Linnzan genus Muscicapa—the Spotted or 
Grey Flycatcher, MJ. grisola, already mentioned. It is a common 
summer - visitant to nearly the whole of Europe, and is found 
throughout Great Britain, though less abundant in Scotland than 
in England, as well as in many parts of Ireland, where, however, 
it seems to be but locally and sparingly distributed. It is one of 
the latest of our migrants to arrive, and seldom reaches these islands 
till the latter part of May, when it may be seen, a small dust- 
coloured bird, sitting on the posts or railings of our gardens and 
fields, ever and anon springing into the air, seizing with an audible 
snap of its bill some passing insect as it flies, and returning to the 
spot it has quitted, or taking up some similar station to keep watch 
as before. It has no song, but merely a plaintive or peevish call- 
note, uttered from time to time with a jerking gesture of the wings. 
It makes a neat nest, built among the small twigs which sprout from 
the bole of a large tree, or fixed in the branches of some plant 
trained against a wall, or placed in any hole of the wall itself that 
may be left by the falling of a brick or stone. The eggs are from 
four to six in number, of a pale greenish-blue, closely blotched or 
freckled with rust-colour. Silent and inconspicuous as is this bird, 
its constant pursuit of flies in the closest vicinity of our houses 
makes it a familiar object to almost everybody. A second British 
species is the Pied Flycatcher, J. atricapilla,—called by some 
writers the Coldfinch—a much rarer bird, and in England not often 
seen except in the hilly country extending from the Peak of Derby- 
shire to Cumberland, and more numerous in the Lake district than 
elsewhere. It is not common in Scotland, and has only once been 
observed in Ireland. More of a woodland bird than the former, 
the brightly -contrasted black and white plumage of the cock, 
together with his agreeable song, readily attracts attention where 
it occurs. It is a summer visitant to all Western Europe, but 
further eastward its place is taken by a nearly allied species, 
M. collaris, in which the white of the throat and breast extends 
1 Of the 30 genera or subgenera which Swainson included in his Natural 
Arrangement and Relations of the Fanily of Flycatchers (published in 1838), at 
least 19 do not belong to the Muscicapidx at all, and one of them, Todus, 
not even to the Order Passeres. It is perhaps impossible to name any ornitho- 
logical work whose substance so fully belies its title as does this treatise. Swain- 
son wrote it filled with faith in the so-called ‘‘ Quinary System” (see INTRODUC- 
TION), and, unconsciously swayed by that bias, his judgment was warped to fit 
his hypothesis. 
