FAM. COLIID& 
BY P. L. SCLATER 
their cered beak, pamprodactylous feet, their ten long thin tail-feathers and their wiry 
plumage. It would in fact be easy to divide Birds into «Colies» and « Non-Colies». 
Two species of this peculiar form were known to Linnzus, but he placed one of them 
with the Finches (Loxia colius) and the other with the Shrikes (Lanius macrourus). The acute 
observer Brisson first formed the Colies into a genus (Colius) in 1760, and since then their claims 
to stand apart as a separate group of Birds have been universally recognized, though it is not 
easy to say to what Family they are most closely allied, or to assign to them an exact place in 
the Picarian Order. ; 
Dr. Murie, who wrote an essay on the structure of the Colies in « The [bis » for 1872, 
made them an Order by themselves (Coliomorphe), Garrod who read a paper on their anatomy 
before the Zoological Society of London in 1876 (see Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1876, p. 416), 
placed them in a separate Family, « related on the one hand to the Picidz and on the other 
hand to the Alcedinide and Bucerotide ». We shall not be far wrong in acquiescing in the views 
of the last distinguished anatomist, through we may agree with Mr. W. L. Sclater (Birds of 
Africa, Vol. 2, p. 94) that the Colies have also some distant affinities to the Plantain-eaters 
(Musophagide) and to the Parrots (Psittaci). 

Characters. The most essential characters of the Coliine structure may be summed up 
as follows : 
Palate desmognathous. 
