SPIZIXOS CANIFRONS, myth. 



Crested Spizixos. 



Spiziocos canifrons, Blyth, Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., xiv. p. 571. — Id. Cat. of Birds in Mus. Asiatic Soc. Calcutta, 

 p. 339. 



The large group of Insessorial birds inhabiting India and the neighbouring countries, known under the 

 trivial name of Bnlbuls, comprises several genera, among them, Hemiooos> Alcurus, Iwos y Keelartia, Rubigula, 

 Brachypodius, Otocompsa, Pycnonotus, and Spiziwos. Some of these curious birds are crested, others are 

 adorned with tufts of feathers springing from the sides of the face; some are distinguished by fine colours 

 on the throat or elsewhere, while others are plainly attired. Generally speaking the sexes are alike, and I 

 believe they all live exclusively on insects. 



The two species known of the present form, of which the bird here represented is the type, differ from 

 the other members of the family in their bills being shorter, more obtuse, and somewhat assimilating to the 

 form of that organ in the members of the genus Ampelis — a modification in structure which is doubtless 

 accompanied by some especial peculiarity in their general economy and mode of life at present unknown 

 to us. But few specimens of the Spizixos canifrons have as yet been sent to Europe, and it is here figured 

 for the first time. The following notes of its colouring and the country it inhabits are extracted from the 

 fourteenth volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal/ and as they are from the pen of 

 Mr. Blyth we may be certain are correct. 



"General colour bright olive-green, becoming yellowish green and more vivid on the rump and margins 

 of the primaries, and inclining also to yellow on the abdomen and more decidedly on the lower tail-coverts ; 

 forehead and chin pale ashy ; nape, sides, and front of the neck somewhat darker, and passing into blackish 

 on the throat ; crown black, the feathers lengthened to a crest nearly an inch high ; tail-feathers largely 

 tipped with blackish ; bill yellow ; legs brown. 



" Habitat. Cherra Poonjee, or the hill ranges bordering on Sylhet to the northward." 



One of the two figures on the accompanying Plate represents the bird of the natural size, the other is 

 somewhat reduced. The plant is the Thibaudia macrantha. 





