ON" THE ORIGIN OF GENERA. ^^^ 



United States, and not less than seven of the typo genus Corvus 

 to our one common and two rare. Of these two are of the laro-er 

 species, the ravens. If we turn to the cheerful larks, we find the 

 proportion again the same ; fifteen species for Palestine and one 

 for the whole United States. One congener of our species occurs 

 there ; the other genera call to mind the African deserts and Rus- 

 sian steppes. Motacillidse, again, ten to one against our fauna. We 

 have two Tanagridae to imitate them, besides the one true relative. 

 In swallows we are about equal, and in the forest-haunting Parid^ 

 — titmice and wrens — we exceed a little ; but the comparison of 

 Sylviidse and Turdidas is most striking. These highest of the bird 

 series, especially made to gladden man's haunts with song, exceed 

 in number all the other ten-quilled Oscines together inhabiting 

 Palestine, amounting to seventy-five species. In our correspond- 

 ing region of the United States nineteen species is the quantum. 

 It is true no mocking-bird or wood-robin is known away from our 

 shores, but Palestine has the nightingale, the black-cap, and the 

 true warblers or sylvias, which, while they glean from shrub and 

 tree their smallest insect enemies, as do our equally numerous 

 small Tanagridse, have much louder and sweeter voices. 



Our solitary bluebird represents the long-winged Turdidae ; in 

 the Holy Land there are twenty species corresponding, though 

 none are of our genus. There are, indeed, but three genera of 

 these two families common to both countries. One of these, La- 

 nius, the butcher-bird, occurs here in one species, in Palestine 

 in six. 



Turning now to a lower series, we look in vain for Clamatorial 

 perchers ; that series which gives us the fierce king-bird and queru- 

 lous pewee, and which peoples South America with thrush and 

 warbler, and shrike and tree-creeper. 



In taking a hasty glance over the lower groups, where the carot- 

 id arteries begin to be double, as the Syndactyli, we find Palestine 

 too far from the tropics to present us with much array ; but in 

 the related zygodactyles our forest-crowned continent must claim 

 great pre-eminence. It has but a solitary Picus, while we have 

 eight in the immediate neighborhood of lat. 40°, in our Eastern 

 States. 



I will close with the birds of prey. Four swamp-hawks, eleven 

 species of falcons, four kites, and eight native eagles, form a list 

 unequaled in the annals of nobility by any land. There are to- 

 gether thirty-one species of Falconidae, and of Vultures four. The 



