On the genus Icterus ofM, Brisson. 183 



beeir able to detect but few deviations from nature in the ar- 

 rangement of those primary groups. 



The most striking perhaps of these alleged deviations of Lin- 

 naeus is observable in the construction of his genus Oriolus. That 

 group embraces species which are now considered to exhibit two 

 distinct types of form, and to occupy two separate stations in na- 

 ture : the one, composing the genuine Orioli of the Old World, 

 and the second the Icteri of M. Brisson or the Cassiques of the 

 French Ornithologists, which belong to the New ; the first of 

 these being birds which approach most closely to the Thrushes by 

 their general habits, and the construction of their bill, which is 

 arched aud dentated ', the latter, birds which are equally allied 

 to the Stares by their gregarious and praedacious habits, and their 

 sharp, straight, conical and entire bills. A general resemblance 

 which, at first sight, may be observed between the two groups, 

 accounts for their being placed in one continuous assemblage by 

 Linnaeus. A similarity of colouring prevails throughout the spe- 

 cies of both, so strong as to have suggested the greater part of the 

 different names assigned to them ;* a partial approximation of 

 habits appears to bring them in contact ; together with a very 

 striking correspondence in the manner of building their nests, 

 which are generally suspensile, and for the most part woven to- 

 gether with unusual ingenuity and elegance. These relations, 

 however, between the two groups are considered by modern sci- 

 ence to be merely analogical : while the stronger relations, which 

 unite the true Orioli to the Merulidce^ and the Icteri to the Stur- 

 nidcB, are conceived to be those of affinity. The Orioles conse- 

 quently have of late been placed with the Thrushes in M.Cuvier's 

 tribe of Dentirostresjaxid the Icteri with the Stares in his adjoining 

 tribe of Conirosires. How far the above relations of analogy that 

 exist between the two groups may still be preserved, and how far 

 they may still form a bond of connexion between them in the 

 general arrangement of the order to which they belong, is a point 

 which I have attempted to explain in some observations on the ge- 

 neral affinities of Ornithology lately published in the Linuean Trans- 

 actions.+ And I have felt considerable satisfaction in being thus 



* Such as Oriolus, Icterus, Xanlhornus. + Vol. XIV. p. 471. 



