242 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



Robins and Chats, Nightingales and Redstarts are wanting, 

 but their places are taken by the Blue-Birds (Sialia) and other 

 forms. 



The bill in the Turdida varies considerably in shape, being 

 sometimes flattened and beset with many bristles like a Fly- 

 catcher's, but the nostrils are always exposed, not covered with 

 hairs as in the last-named family. There is a slightly-indicated 

 notch near the end of the upper mandible. 



The family has been divided by Mr. Seebohm, who has made 

 the TurdidcR his special study, into two main groups, one with 

 a white pattern extending across the under surface of the wings, 

 and the second without any such patch. The genus Oreocichla, 

 with White's Thrush, and Geocichla^ with the Siberian Thrush, 

 come under the first heading. All the other Thrushes are 

 divided by him into three sections, i, the True Thrushes, 

 Turdus, in which both male and female are alike in plumage ; 



2, the Blackbirds, in which the sexes differ in colour; and 



3, the Robins, Chats, and Redstarts, in which the sexes may 

 or may not differ in colour, but in which the bill is dark, not 

 pale as in the Blackbird group. Mr. Gates separates the 

 Turdidce into five sub-families, but the characters are some- 

 what artificial, and we do not agree with his conclusions 

 entirely. (Cf. Gates, Faun. Brit. Ind. Birds, ii., p. 57.) 



THE GOLDEN THRUSHES. GENUS OREOCICHLA. 



Oreocichla, Gould, P. Z. S., 1837, p. 145. 



Type, O. varia (Pall). 



There is a certain character in the mottled plumage of 

 White's Thrush and its allies which separates them from all 

 the other members of the family, and renders it convenient to 

 recognise them as belonging to a separate genus from Turdiis 

 and Aferula. They have the white pattern on the inner face of 

 the wing, as in the Ground-Thrushes (Geociehla\ and, as in the 

 latter birds, the axillaries are of a different colour from the 

 under wing-coverts. The sexes are alike in colour, and the 

 under surface of the body is "lunulated," with distinct spots 

 or bars. The rictal bristles are few and lateral. 



Of the genus Oreocichla about a dozen species are known, 

 all of the same peculiar type, and most of them confined to the 



