72 
BOMBYCILLA GARRULA. 
naked nostrils. In fact, the germs 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 Japanese, 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 hut natural group, at one time placed by 
Linne in the carnivorous genus Lanius , notwithstanding 
its exclusively frugivorous habits, was finally restored 
by him to Ampelis , in which he was followed by Latham. 
Brisson placed it in Turdus , and Bliger in Corvus » 
Ornithologists now concur in regarding it as a genus, 
disagreeing only as to the name, some calling it Bom- 
byciphora , others Bombycivora , though they all appear 
to have lately united in favour of the more elegant and 
prior termination of Bomby cilia. 
The wax w ings, which we place in our family Sericati , 
having no other representative in Europe or North 
America, are easily recognized by their short, turgid 
hill, trigonal at base, somewhat compressed and curved 
at tip, where both mandibles are strongly notched ; 
their short feet, and rather long subacute wings. But 
their most curious trait consists in the small, flat, oblong 
appendages, resembling in colour and substance red 
sealing-wax, found at the tips of the secondaries in the 
adult. These appendages are merely the coloured 
corneous prolongation of the shafts beyond the webs 
of the feathers. The new species from Japan is, as we 
have mentioned, at all times without them, as well as 
the young of the two others. The plumage of all is of 
a remarkably fine and silky texture, lying extremely 
close ; and they are all largely and pointedly crested, the 
sexes hardly differing in this respect. 
The waxwings live in numerous flocks, keeping by 
