446 



BRITISH BIRDS OF THE ROBIN KIND. 



alludes to one or two birds which he thinks will turn out to be mere 

 varieties of that species ; these I think may possibly refer to our chiff- 

 chaff. I have specimens of both these birds now before me. The 

 rufous petty chaps is shorter and stouter built than the chiff-chaff; its 

 legs and feet are of a very light colour, and the ridge of its bill is more 

 depressed than in that bird. The colour of the upper parts, in both, 

 is nearly the same, but inclining more to brown in the former, and to 

 green in the latter. The whole under parts of the former have a faint 

 but decided tinge of russet brown ; and the feathers on the thighs 

 (tibia), which in the chiff-chaff are yellow, in the rufous pettychaps 

 are of a pale brown. Both species utter the same, or nearly the same 

 peculiar double note. The rufous pettychaps, according to M. Tem- 

 minck, inhabits large woods, and especially tir and pine plantations, 

 the same is said also of the chiff-chaff, but I cannot corroborate this 

 from my own observation, for out of hundreds of these birds which I 

 have heard, I never remember to have noticed one in a fir-tree. The 

 rufous pettychaps is found in Germany, France, and Holland, and per- 

 haps the birds which in this country are observed particularly to affect 

 fir-trees, will turn out, upon examination, to be of that species, con- 

 founded hitherto with the chiff-chaff from the similarity of their notes. 

 The young of these two birds, I am informed, are very dissimilar, those 

 of S. rufa, being of a dark ashy brown ; but their eggs are hardly to be 

 distinguished. 



There is in the British Museum, in a room exclusively set apart for 

 the reception of British specimens, a well-preserved skin of the Nat- 

 terer's pettychaps (S. naltcreri)^ a species which is described as an 

 inhabitant of the south of Europe. Whether or not this really is a 

 British specimen I cannot pretend to determine, but I can find no 

 account of the species ever having been found in this country. Unless 

 it is thoroughly ascertained to have been killed in Britain, it certainly 

 ought not to be placed in a collection of (exclusively) British spe- 

 cimens. 



I may remark, in conclusion, that throughout the whole, range of 

 ornithology there is not a more natural genus than Sylvia, as thus 

 restricted ; indeed, I feel confident that the whole of the arrangement 

 here proposed will meet the approbation of all who are acquainted 

 with the living birds. The generic divisions may appear rather small, 

 perhaps unnecessarily so to those who have studied only in museums ; 

 but they certainly are not more so than the genera which are almost 

 universally adopted in entomology, and in other departments of natural 



