820 TEN YEARS IN SWEDEN. 



wagtail/' and in this the head is dark lead grey, with no 

 stripe over the eye. 



It is extremely difficult to decide whether these birds 

 should be all taken as separate species, or only varieties in 

 colour of one form ; and I shall close my account of the 

 wagtails with the following very sensible quotation from Dr. 

 Breeds work,, which I strongly recommend to the perusal of 

 the modern school of species-mongers. He says : " As Dr. 

 Zander has well remarked, we find the two ends of the 

 series of varieties, and constitute them species. The inter- 

 mediate forms do not come under our observation so fre- 

 quently, and we therefore lose the significance of the serial 

 affinities. Believing as I do, that much of the system of 

 determining species in natural history in modern days is 

 deficient in sound scientific principle, I have no occasion to 

 seek for a solution of the difficulty in the theory of trans- 

 mutation. I think that differences of climate and food are 

 all sufficient to produce a great majority of the variations 

 we meet with, and as it is more than probable that the 

 world contains a vast number of special causes wherein 

 these influences of food and climate operate distinctly, I 

 have no difficulty in accounting for the variation of species, 

 or of satisfying myself that the difference of a feather here 

 or there, is not sufficient to justify the splitting up of our 

 naturally defined genera and families, into an interminable 

 long list of Greek derivatives, quite sufficient to frighten 

 away nine -tenths of the students of nature, from the most 

 beautiful and instructive of all pursuits." 



Gen. Anthus, Bechst. 



Colour lark grey, tail shorter than in the wagtails, of 

 twelve feathers indented. Form a very good transition from 

 the wagtails to the larks, which latter genus they resemble, 

 but differ in the more slender build of body, the longer tail, 

 the more crooked hind claw, the more pointed head, and 

 the uncovered nostrils. 



Like the latter birds they build on the ground, and lay 

 about five dark- coloured eggs, either mottled or spotted. Are 



