242 
allen’s naturalist’s library. 
Robins and Chats, Nightingales and Redstarts are wanting, 
but their places are taken by the Blue-Birds ( Sialia ) and other 
forms. 
The bill in the Tnrdidce varies considerably in shape, being 
sometimes flattened and beset with many bristles like a Fly- 
catcher’s, but the nostrils are always exposed, not covered with 
hairs as in the last-named family. There is a slightly-indicated 
notch near the end of the upper mandible. 
The family has been divided by Mr. Seebohm, who has made* 
the Tnrdidce his special study, into two main groups, one with 
a white pattern extending across the under surface of the wings, 
and the second without any such patch. The genus Oreocichla, 
with White’s Thrush, and Geocichla, with the Siberian Thrush, 
come under the first heading. All the other Thrushes are 
divided by him into three sections, — i, the True Thrushes, 
Ticrdus, in which both male and female are alike in plumage ; 
2, the Blackbirds, in which the sexes differ in colour; and 
3, the Robins, Chats, and Redstarts, in which the sexes may 
or may not differ in colour, but in which the bill is dark, not 
pale as in the Blackbird group. Mr. Oates separates the 
Turdidce into five sub-families, but the characters are some- 
what artificial, and we do not agree with his conclusions 
entirely. (Cf Oates, Faun. Brit. Ind. Birds, ii., p. 57.) 
THE GOLDEN THRUSHES. GENUS OREOCICIILA. 
Oreocichla, Gould, P. Z. S., 1837, p. 145. 
Type, O. mria (Pall.). 
There is a certain character in the mottled plumage of 
White’s Thrush and its allies which separates them from all 
the other members of the family, and renders it convenient to 
recognise them as belonging to a separate genus from Tardus 
and Merula. They have the white pattern on the inner face of 
the wing, as in the Ground-Thrushes ( Geocichla ), and, as in the 
latter birds, the axillaries are of a different colour from the 
under wing-coverts. The sexes are alike in colour, and the 
under surface of the body is “lunulated,” with distinct spots 
or bars. The rictal bristles are few and lateral. 
Of the genus Oreocichla about a dozen species are known, 
all of the same peculiar type, and most of them confined to the 
