458 
BOHEMIAN WAXWING. 
mon and familiar cedar bird, from the reproach of degeneracy. 
But with the more enlightened opinions that now prevail, its 
occurrence in that unexplored portion of the globe is import- 
ant, chiefly as tending to solve the problem of the place of 
abode of this mysterious wanderer ; especially as, by a singu- 
lar coincidence, whilst we were proclaiming this species as 
American, it was received by Temminck from Japan, together 
with a new species, the third known of the genus, which he 
has caused to be figured and distinguished by the appropriate 
name of Bomhycilla phoenicoptera^ Boie. Besides the red band 
across the wing, whence its name is derived, the length of its 
crest, adorned with black feathers, and the uniform absence, 
in all states, of the corneous appendages of the wings, this 
new species, resembling more in size and shape the Carolina 
wax- wing, (cedar bird,) than the present, is eminently distin- 
guished from both by wanting the small, closely-set feathers 
covering the nostrils, hitherto assigned as one of the characters 
of the genus. This example evinces the insufficiency of that 
character, though Illiger considered it of such importance as to 
induce him to unite in his great genus Corvus^ (comprehend- 
ing this, as well as several other distinct groups,) all the spe- 
cies possessing it. It shows, especially, how erroneous it is to 
form two separate families for the allied genera with covered 
or naked nostrils. In fact, the genus as it now stands, is, not 
the less for this aberration, an exceedingly natural one, though 
the two species that are now known to inhabit America, are 
still more allied to each other than either of them to the Ja- 
panese, the present (Bohemian) differing chiefly by its larger 
size, mahogany-brown tail-coverts, and cinereous belly, the 
first being white, and the second yellowish, in the cedar^bird, 
which also wants the yellow and white markings on the wing. 
Of the three species now comprehended in the genus, one is 
peculiar to America, a second to eastern Asia, and the present 
common to all the Arctic world. 
This small but natural group, at one time placed by Linne 
in the carnivorous genus Lanius, notwithstanding its exclu- 
