THE MUSCICAPID^E. 69 



the typical groups, which are so dissimilar from any 

 of the chatterers, that they are in no danger of being 

 confounded, even by the student; but in such as 

 appear to be aberrant divisions, or, in other words, 

 which connect the two families, the leading charac- 

 ters of both are in a greater or less degree united. 

 The birds which occupy this intervening station 

 have an organization which proves them to feed 

 upon fruit as well as upon insects, and the propor- 

 tion in which these two different regimens are 

 combined is manifested by the structure of the 

 mouth ; the presence or absence of rigid bristles at 

 the rictus or gape, is decisive of the bird being fru- 

 givorous or insectivorous ; and when, as in the Piau- 

 hou or red-throated chatterer of authors, the gape and 

 general form of the bill assimilates to the Ampelidce, 

 yet that the rictus has stiff bristles, we infer that 

 such a bird, although habitually a fruit-eater, is like- 

 wise a devourer of insects. And this accordingly 

 turns out to be the fact. In this and all the other 

 types which shew a tendency towards the family we 

 have just left, the feet are much the same as those 

 of the genus Casmorhynchus : that is, the toes are 

 more or less united at their base, the soles broad, 

 and the lateral scales of the tarsi are very small 

 and numerous; the gape also continues to be very 

 wide and the bill strong, often thick, and although 

 depressed, is never so completely flattened as in 

 the typical Muscicapidae ; the few birds placed in 

 the genera Psaris, Packrynchus, and Querula, are 

 precisely of this description, and but for the stiff 



