10 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 
where the species are very numerous: the plumage is | 
thick, but the texture of the feathers uncommonly soft 
and lax: the colours are — 
- always sombre, but often - — 
s variegated with much ~ 
w= elegance by dark bands 
'#& and white spots. One of 
== the largest species, as if, 
emblematic of their dis- 
position, is covered all 
over with broad black 
stripes, upon a fawn-coloured ground, strikingly ana- 
logous to the marks of the tiger. The genus Mala- 
conotus represents these birds in Africa ; and, although 
long confounded with them, their distinctions are 
very decisive: as the American group is distinguished 
by its dark colours, so is the African for the gaiety 
and brightness of the plumage. The Malaconoti, © 
in fact, are thé most beautiful of all the shrikes: the 
brightest crimson, combined with glossy black, or clear 
green with orange or yellow, decorate most of the species ; 
others, however, have the sombre colour of the American 
group, but they are never banded ; while a few so nearly 
approach the next, or typical shrikes, that it is extremely 
difficult to distinguish them, otherwise than by the great 
inequality of their lateral toes, —theinner one being always 
much shorter than the outer, and the latter often so con- 
nected to the middle toe that the feet become partially syn- 
dactyle. Of the Australian genus Collurisoma nothing 
beyond its external characters is known, while its species 
are very few, and their precise situation in this division 
remains to be demonstrated. They probably, however, 
represent the tenuirostral type. 
(18.) The Laniane, or true shrikes, will complete the 
circleof this family. The precise passage between thisand 
the last seems to be effected by a remarkable bird, disco - 
vered in South Africa by Mr. Buschell ; it forms our genus 
Chetoblemma, and is the only short-billed shrike which has 
the frontal feathers stiff, and directed forward upon the 
