ORNITHOLOGY. 



liesitation in referring it to that genus. Indeed its characters are 

 so conformable with that genus that no Enghsh writer has conceived 

 the propriety of separating it from them ; and it has been described 

 by Pennant, Latham, Shaw, and some others. The French writers 

 are of a different opinion: they divide the Lanii into several families, 

 and this is one among tlie number of those separated from the Lanius 

 genus. This separation has been induced chiefly from the structure 

 of the bill. It must be admitted that a slight dissimilarity does 

 prevail in the form of the bill in this bird from that of others of its 

 tribe ; it is larger and more swollen in its shape than usual in the 

 Shrike family, but we are not sufficiently impressed with its generical 

 dissimilaritybeing so considerable as to demand its separation from 

 the Lanius genus. 



It should be observed that BufFon, contrary to the example of 

 Linnaeus, divided the Lanius or Shrike tribe into families, and that 

 he separated the species now before us, with one or two others, into 

 a particular group, which he called Becarde, a name implying the 

 greater magnitude of the bill in this group, in comparison with that of 

 the other Lanii from which he divided them. It is to this separation 

 of the Shrike tribe, by the French Naturalist Buffon, that the obser- 

 vations of Cuvier refer, when in speaking of his new genus Psaris^ 

 he tells us, that Buffon has extended, mal a propos^ the name of 

 Becarde to a Tyran (Tyranusf ) and to a Piegrieche or Shrike, nearly 

 allied to the Merles (Turdus Lmn.%) Psaris is the Greek name of 



* P saris. " Ont le bee conique, tres gros, et rond h sa base, mais 

 n'echancrant point le front ; sa pointe est 16gerement comprimee et crochue." 

 T.l.p. 341. Reg. Animal. 



t Lanius sulfuratus. 



X Lanius barbarus. 



