NEW SPECIES OF THE MOTACILLTNiE. 



187 



below ; its six centrals even, and its form sub-cuneate. The general structure 

 of these birds is robust and nearer to Turdus than to Matacilla ; but the pied 

 plumage and habit of flirting the tail, are borrowed from the latter genus. 



The song is the Thrush's : the murary and arboreal nesting, rather 

 Meruline than Motacilline. And so, too, the non-migratory habits; 

 for the Wagtails proper leave us at their " appointed season," whilst the 

 Thrushes, (like the Enicuri) are permanent. Many of the Wagtails, so 

 long as they stay, familiarly occupy our gardens and lawns, seeking their 

 food exclusively on the ground, and using the bushes only for shelter, but 

 without perching. These, excepting the last peculiarity, are the manners 

 of our Dahlia which, like Motacilla, has an almost exclusively animal 

 diet, seldom and only from necessity eating berries or unripe vetches and 

 such comparatively soft vegetable substances. So far, then, there is a 

 greater leaning to Motacilla than to Turdus, which latter is freely bacci- 

 vorous : Nor do the Dahils wholly avoid the open banks of streamlets ; 

 for I have seen them there in company with the Wagtails. But their 

 usual protected and arboreal site, with their free habit of perching, are 

 decidedly more Turdine than Motacilline. The Dahils, however, dislike 

 and avoid the interior of woods, to which the Thrushes are partial ; 

 and the former are less permanently, or (to speak nicely) more fitfully 

 upon the ground than the latter. The usual food of the Dahils is 

 grubs, worms, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and their consimilars, 

 tenants of the surface or subsurface of the Earth. Rarely, in Avinter, 

 they take unripe vetches and such like ; but never gravel, nor sand, 

 nor the hard seeds which the former help the digestion of. The 

 Dahils, if found in the wilds, tenant meadows and grass land, provided 

 with brush-wood ; but they are no where so common as in gardens 

 and on lawns, which they enliven, in spring, by their song, and, at 

 all times, by their vivacity and familiarity. They move quickly on the 

 ground, yet perch firmly and readily, frequently watching for their prey 

 on a low twig to which they return as soon as they have beaten it to death 

 on the ground. They never seize on the wing. 



