214 
MUSCICAPA. 
well defined, and pointing directly forward, so as to 
separate these birds from the stone-chats*, are yet 
short, and by no means so strong as in the preced- 
ing divisions. The wings, as already intimated, are 
the longest and the most pointed of all the fly- 
catchers : they generally reach to half or three - 
quarters the length of the tail, while their typical 
structure is no less peculiar : the first quill is com- 
pletely spurious, — in other words, it is quite useless 
for any purposes of flight, and seems intended either 
to designate the natural situation of these birds in 
the scale of nature, or to serve as some protection 
to the base of the next or second quill, which very 
nearly reaches the end of the third, so that the 
second and third pen-feathers, — which in all the 
preceding suh-genera are short and graduated, — 
become the longest of all. The tail is rather short, 
and the termination is not only quite even, hut 
assumes in the middle an inclination to being 
slightly forked. Such are the typical characters as 
exhibited by our common Muscicapa grisola and 
the two other European species. But before we 
attempt to show in what manner these characters are 
modified in the extra-European species, we shall 
figure and describe the Muscicapa albicollis. 
* See Observations on the two families, under the head of 
Petroica multicolor , Zool. 111. 
