Robins and Chats, Nightingales and Redstarts are wanting, 

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

 forms. 



The bill in the Turdidce 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 mad( 

 the Turdidce. 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 GeocichZa, 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; am 



3, the Robins, Chats, and Redstarts, in which the sexes ma] 

 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 

 W'hite'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 Turdns 

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

 the wing, as in the Ground-Thrushes (Geocichla), 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 





