150 BIRDS OF INDIA. 



and hooked, in others lengthened and subulate ; in some short and 

 flat, in others long, slender, and curved. The form of the wings 

 and tail, too, differs greatly. There are usually ten primaries, one 

 of them sometimes exceedingly minute, and occasionally wanting. 

 The* tail feathers are generally twelve, ten in a very few, eight 

 in one genus, and rudimental in another. The legs and feet 

 arc in all proper for perching, and in the more perfect ones 

 suited also for walking on the ground, or hopping. The toes never 

 have a basal connecting membrane, but the outer toe and the middle 

 one are joined at the base, more or less, in most of the order, and in 

 some families for more than half the length. 



They vary a good deal in anatomical structure. Their stomach 

 is in most a more or less muscular gizzard, in others simpl}' membra- 

 nous ; the intestines vary in length ; most of them have two minute 

 coeca, they are entirely absent in some, and in a few they are very 

 large. The sternum has in most only one emargination posteriorly 

 on each side ; two in some ; in others a foramen, and in some no 

 trace of either foramen or notch. Most of them have a peculiar com- 

 plicated larynx with several pairs of muscles ; others want them. 



All the singing birds belong to this order; most of them 

 build nests of materials interwoven together ; others nestle in 

 holes of trees or banks ; a very few deposit their eggs on the 

 bare ground. The young in most are born naked. Their food is 

 as varied as their form. Fruits, seeds, and insects form their chief 

 diet ; reptiles, fish, and even small mammals or birds, are partaken 

 of by a few. 



This vast order of birds presents considerable difficulties in the 

 endeavour to classify them into large groups or tribes. The system 

 of Cuvier, as modified by Vigors, Swainson, Gray, and others, is 

 generally in use among Englisli ornithologists ; and as it is the one 

 used in Gray's " List of Genera of Birds," the Catalogues of the 

 British Museum, and in Horsfield's " Catalogue of the Birds in the 

 E. I. C. Museum," I shall, in the main, adopt it in the present 

 work, without implicitly following either one or the other. 



I do this, partly because I think it unadvisable to present to 

 the student of Indian Ornithology, for whom this work is chiefly 

 intended, a system of classification dilFerent from those thoy have 



