* 
“ 
i ; 
BOHEMIAN WAX-WING. 9 
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 Lanins, notwithstanding its exclusively 
frugivorous habits, was finally restored by him to Jlmpelis, in 
which he was followed by Latham. Brisson placed it in Turdus, 
and Illiger in Corvus. Ornithologists now concur in regarding it 
as a genus, disagreeing only as to the name, some calling it 
Bombyciphora, others Bombycivora, though they all appear to have 
lately united in favour of the more elegant, and prior termination 
of Bombycilla. 
The Wax-wings, which we place in our family Sericati, having 
no other representative in Europe or North America, are easily 
recognised by their short, turgid bill, 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 append¬ 
ages, 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 Wax-wings live in numerous flocks, keeping by pairs only 
in the breeding season, and so social is their disposition, that as 
soon as the young are able to fly, they collect in large bands from 
vol. hi. —c 
**>“ 3 ! 
