BLYTH ON THE BRITISH FRUIT-EATING WARBLERS 307 



broad line of distinction which no ornithologist has noticed, separating 

 the fruit-eating Sylvia ( Curruca, Bechstein) from the aquatic war- 

 blers and the nightingale. In all the true Curmcce, which live mainly 

 on vegetable food, the inside of the mouth and throat is of a fine red * ; 

 in the others it is of a yellow-orange. Show me a nest of Sylviadce, 

 just hatched, and by that feature I shall instantly determine to which 

 family they belong. I have seen no engravings or descriptions 

 of birds, in which due attention has been paid to the aperture of the 

 bill. In the true Curnicce, or fruit-eating birds, it descends with a 

 curvature below the eye : in the wrens (I do not mean the troglodyte 

 or common wren), and in the aquatic warblers or sedge-birds, it is 

 straight and anterior to the eye, the bill being in the ' willow '-wrens, 

 slender and weak, in the sedge-birds, of which I should make a genus 

 Schcenia, strong and dilated at the base. The incomparable nightin- 

 gale has a very peculiar bill, and I suspect that its two species, the 

 larger and lesser (Philomela magna and Ph. luscinia, Blyth), form a 

 genus by themselves, unless the little known Sylvia sericea (Tem.) 

 belongs to them," &c. 



The accuracy of these observations will be at once perceived by any 

 person who has ever examined living or recently killed specimens of 

 our various warblers ; as to the distorted hideous-looking caricatures 

 of nature which we so generally see in museums, they are often more 

 likely to mislead a naturalist, than to assist him in tracing the generic 

 resemblances of these birds. The collection of native warblers, for 

 example, in the British Museum, is a disgrace to the institution, and 

 so far from aiding the endeavours of a student to acquire a knowledge 

 of British ornithology (the proper object of such a collection), it requires 

 a very considerable previous acquaintance with the living birds to 

 enable a person to recognise many of the species in the disguised 

 forms which they have been there made to assume. The attitudes of 

 most of the warblers are peculiar and characteristic, and without a due 

 attention to the proper and natural positions of each species, no stuffed 

 specimens can ever be made to have the appearance of life, even if 

 otherwise well mounted. 



It is, indeed, the wretched manner in which these birds have usually 

 been stuffed, that has been a principal cause of their having been so 

 badly and unnaturally arranged ; their generic resemblances having 



* In the garden warbler {Sylvia hortensis, Tem.), the inside of the mouth and 

 throat is of an orange yellow. — E. B. 



