LANIAN^. FALCUNOUtUS. 
11 
base of the bill: in this respect, and in its long wings, it pre- 
sents a curious analogy to Prionops among the bush-shrikes. 
We need not dwell upon the peculiarities of the British 
shrikes (L. rufus, fig. 118.), since these may be learned 
from any book on native 
Ornithology; and those 
found beyond our is- 
lands have precisely 
the same bold and cruel 
disposition. As the 
genus Lunius is pre- 
eminently typical, not 
only of its own family, 
but of the whole tribe of Pentirostres, or tooth-billed 
birds, we accordingly find that Nature has furnished 
every country in the world with examples of this, her 
most perfect form: even in New Holland, — a region 
which so often appears exempt from those laws of 
creation which regulate the animal distribution of other 
countries, — we have 
a peculiar type of the 
true shrikes, represent- 
ed by the Falcunculm 
frontalis {fig. 1190- 
Its manners, however, 
are singularly at vari- 
ance with all others : 
instead ofwatching for 
its prey, and devour- 
ing birds or grasshoppers, by impaling them upon thorns 
and feeding on them at leisure, like the true shrikes, it 
climbs among the branches of trees, strips oil’ the bark, 
and devours the hard-coated beetles which lurk be- 
neath.* It would be difficult to conceive, theoretically, 
how a shrike could resemble a woodpecker ; yet here is a 
bird having the form and structure of the first, with the 
habits of the second. This New Holland shrike, as 
being the scansorial type of tlie Laniance, becomes the 
* Lewin’s Birds of New Holland. 
