100 ON THE CLASSIFICATION iv wine: 
which are well kde to Posiai: the tracks of ane ir 
mu p =. order to search afte 
= such insects as are 
= disturbed by their 
=- grazing. It is singu- 
lar to witness the as- 
«uc: sociation of crows and 
- Starlings in the same 
field,— nearly in the 
flock, — and ‘almost — 
adopting the same ha- 
bits ; each bird gay ‘he other in itsown particular — 
family : in both, the lengthened and conic form of the bill 
is well adapted for searching after insects in the ground ; } 
both walk in the same stately manner, and both seem so — 
attached to cattle and sheep as to rest upon their backs, 
In the genus Pastor ( fig. 154. a,b), the bill (as in Lam-— 
protornis) is compressed: but in the European starlings, — 
forming the genus Sturnus, it is more acute and depressed — 
(e, d) ; the notch also is so faint as to be nearly obsolete. 
Some of the foreign pastors, leading to Gracula Cuv., 
are furnished with naked wattles, and seem providen- 
tially created to destroy those devastating flights of locusts _ 
which so often appear on the plains of Southern Africa, — i 
(117) The AceLarnm, or maize-birds, succeed to 
the starlings; the two subfamilies, in short, are so 
completely united by the Stwrnella collaris, or collared 
starling of North America, that, but for the discovery 
of the genus Oxystomus, it would be difficult to say 
in which group Sturnella should be placed. We now 
enter upon a group so truly natural, that the confused 
notions of certain writers regarding their distinctions oxy 
cites no little surprise. Ignorance of the natural habi 
of these birds, or a disregard of that peculiarity of strug 
ture which would, in some respects, point out their habits, — 
will always produce a generalising but a very artificial 
arrangement of groups nearly connected, but essentially 
different. Such, at least, is the only way in which we 
can account for these birds being considered as part of 
