698 PASSERINI—PATELLA 
Emberiza, Fringilla, Loxia, Cinclus(?) and Corvus—thus differing 
somewhat from Johannes Miiller’s application of the cognate term 
PASSERINI (Abhandl. K. Akad. Berlin, Phys. Kl. 1847, p. 
366), which he regarded as equivalent to the Order INSESSORES 
(as it was then called), separating its members into Passerini 
PoLyMyopI (or OSCINES), TRACHEOPHONES and Prcaru, though 
cautiously declaring these to be not so much the names of groups, 
but as merely indicating different laryngeal formations. 
PASTOR, Temminck’s generic name in 1815 for a beautiful 
bird, the Zurdus-roseus of Linnzeus, very commonly known in Eng- 
lish as the Rose-coloured Pastor, one of the Sturnide (STARLING), 
which is not an infrequent visitor to the British Islands. It is a 
Keg bird of most irregular and erratic 
habits—a vast horde suddenly arriv- 
ing at some place to which it may 
have hitherto been a stranger, and 
at once making a settlement there, 
S leaving it whoily deserted so soon 
Pastor. (After Swainson.) as the young are reared. ‘This 
happened in the summer of 1875 at Villafranca, in the province of 
Verona, the castle of which was occupied in a single day by some 
12,000 or 14,000 birds of this species, as has been graphically told 
by Sig. de Betta (Aditi del R. Ist. Veneto, ser. 5, vol. 11.) ; but similar 
instances have been before recorded,—as in Bulgaria in 1867, near 
Smyrna in 1856, and near Odessa in 1844, to mention only some of 
which particulars have been published,! and a concise account of 
them will be found in the Fourth Edition of Yarrell’s British Birds 
(il. pp. 245-250). The Rose-coloured Starling hardly ever occurs 
in Africa, but is a well-known bird in India, over nearly the whole 
of which it regularly appears, and generally in the cold weather. 
PASTURE-BIRD, a name indiscriminately given in parts of 
North America and the West Indies to any of the Stinvrs and 
smaller SANDPIPERS met with on their autumnal migration, and 
then mostly resorting to the cattle-pastures. 
PATELLA, a sesamoid bone interposed in the tendon of the 
extensor-cruris muscle, and connected with the upper end of the 
TIBIA by the Patellar Ligament, which in old birds is often ossified. 
The most remarkable variations of condition are shewn in Colymbus, 
1 It is remarkable that on almost all of these occasions the locality pitched 
upon has been, either at the time or soon after, ravaged by locusts, which the 
birds greedily devour. Another fact worthy of attention is that they are often 
observed to affect trees or shrubs bearing rose-coloured flowers, as Nerium 
oleander and Robinia viscosa, among the blossoms of which they themselves may 
easily escape notice, for their plumage is rose-pink and black shot with blue. 
