CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



191 



assimilates to these smaller species rather than to those shrikes to 

 which the term Lanius is to be restricted (the L. excubitor, L. bo- 

 realis, Sec), yet it is a much too powerfully formed bird to warrant, 

 of itself, any generic separation. 



I am rather surprised that the form of the tail should be adduced as 

 a striking dissimilarity, as in most of the shrikes the tail is more or 

 less wedge-shaped ; there is full as much difference in the tails of the 

 whitethroat and the Dartford warbler (species in other respects closely 

 resembling each other), as there is in the form of the flusher's tail and 

 that of the bearded tit. In its plumage also, I think, this latter species 

 is very similar to many of the shrikes, and few birds look fiercer when 

 held in the hand, or (if 1 may be allowed the word), have a more 

 shrikish expression of countenance than the little bearded tit. Its song 

 again, if song it can be called, bears a considerable resemblance to 

 that of the flusher shrike. For these reasons, I think the term La- 

 niellus, applied to this bird, is by no means inappropriate ; a genus of 

 the American tyrant fly-catcher (Tyrannina), is called Milvulus, the 

 members of which resemble the kites (Milvus) only, I believe, in 

 having forked tails. 



If the bearded tit is still to be considered a member of the tit 

 family (Pariana), it must be placed in one of the most extreme limits 

 of that group ; to class it in the same genus with the ox-eye {Parus 

 major), to which it bears not the slightest similitude, must, to all who 

 have any knowledge of the living birds, appear absurd in the extreme. 

 There is however, certainly, some resemblance between the bearded tit 

 and the bottle tit {Parus caudatus, Ray) ; but the latter bird also 

 differs very considerably/rom the other British species associated with 

 it in Parus. The bottle tit is one of the few small British birds that 

 I have not yet been able to procure alive, and as my knowledge of that 

 species is at present confined to field observation, I would rather defer 

 noticing its peculiarities until I could have an opportunity of studying 

 its manners in confinement. 



Few animals, I observed in the paper to which Mr. Fowler refers, 

 appear so isolated as the bearded tit ; and let it be remembered that 

 one or two particulars were there mentioned, in which a great 

 dissimilarity was pointed out between that species and the shrikes ; 

 namely, the different formation of the digestive organs, and the 

 difference also, in their progressive motion when on the ground ; 

 that of the bearded tit being a decided walk, whilst the shrikes, 

 and the tits also, move forward by successive hops. The bearded tit, 



