THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
the bills in the Catalogue of Birds hi the British Museum nearly forty years 
ago to show the differences. 
They are very small birds with broad, sharp pointed bills, long wings, 
short square tail and medium stout legs and feet. 
The bill is short and broadly conical, anteriorly compressed and basally 
expanded, the culmen semi-keeled and regularly arched, tip sharply pointed 
but no posterior notch; basally the sides of the upper mandible expand and 
overlap the edges of the lower mandible; the nostrils appear as linear slits 
in the basal groove at the base, a thick semi-horny operculum being present 
on to which the frontal feathering projects half way; there are no nasal 
bristles and rictal bristles very weak; the lower mandible fairly stout, the 
interramal space short and feathered. 
The wing is long with the first primary minute, hidden by the coverts 
so that it is commonly asserted to be absent, and the real second is always 
spoken of as the first; this is longest, bub the next two are very little shorter; 
the secondaries are comparatively short. The tail is short and square. 
The tarsus is scutellated in front, sometimes clearly, other times obscurely 
so as to appear booted, while the hind portion of the tarsus is bilaminate, 
but here the distinction of the lamina is sometimes obscurely seen. 
The toes are short, the hind-toe longest, the middle toe a little shorter, 
the outer and inner toes subequal and longer with their claws than the middle 
toe alone ; claws sharp, the liind-claw longer and stouter. 
