JUO BILLS OF THE TENUIHOSTBE9. 



The ant-catchers, dippers, menura, manakins, todies, 

 fly-hunters, fly-catchers, and a number of other races, 

 chiefly inhabiting the warmer parts of the world 

 where insects are most abundant, follow these, vary- 

 ing in their bills with the nature of their principal 

 food, and in their other organisations with their 

 haunts and action; but all agreeing in the general 

 structure of the bill as insectivorous, and generally 

 having it of such consistency as that it can bruise 

 or divide a hard crusted insect. The greater part of 

 them also agree in residing where food is more per- 

 manently to be found, and consequently not being 

 so much given to distant migration as many of the 

 insectivorous races which remain yet to be noticed. 



To these again succeed the chats, wagtails, chanters, 

 warblers, and analogous genera, having the bill gene- 

 rally feebler, feeding on larvae and soft insects, gene- 

 rally sweet singers, much affected by the vernal season, 

 and migrating to warm climates in the winter. In 

 them the notch in the bill is not quite so conspicuous ; 

 and in the wrens, especially the crested wrens, it 

 approaches in some of its characters to the bills of 



Common Wren. Robin, 



the Tenuirostret of Cuvier ; and in the pipits to that 

 of the larks, though the insectivorous character is not 

 lost even in them. 



BILLS OF THB TENUIROSTRES. 



These are chiefly, though not all, insect feeders, and 

 have their bills slender and without any notch at the 



