Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/159

Rh P I T P I T 149 writers applied to them the name of &quot; Water-Thrashes &quot; and &quot;Ant-Thrushes,&quot; though there was no evidence of their having aquatic habits or predilections, or of their preying especially upon ants ; but the fact that they formed a separate Family was gradually admitted. Their position was at last determined by Garrod, who, having obtained examples for dissection, in a communication to the Zoo logical Society of London, printed in its Proceedings for 1876, proved (pp. 512, 513) that the Pittidaz belonged to that section of Passerine Birds which he named Mesomyodi (ORNITHOLOGY, vol. xviii. p. 41), since their syrinx, like that of the Tyrannidse, (KING-BIRD, vol. xiv. p. 80), has its muscles attached to the middle of its half-rings, instead of to their extremities as in the higher Passerines or Acromyodi. This in itself was an unexpected determina tion, for such a structure had been thought to be confined to Birds of the New World, to which none of the Pittas belong. But it is borne out by, and may even serve to explain, the sporadic distribution of the latter, which seems to point them out as survivors of a somewhat ancient and lower type of Passeres. Indeed except on some theory of this kind the distribution of the Pittas is almost unaccountable. They form a very homogeneous Pitta eleyans, male and female. Family, not to say genus, which it is not easy to split up justifiably, for all its members bear an unmistakable and close resemblance to each other -though the species inhabit countries so far apart as Angola and China, India and Australia and, to judge from the little that has been recorded, they are all of terrestrial habit, while their power of flight, owing to their short wings, is feeble. Nearly fifty species have now been described, most of them found in the Malay Archipelago, between the eastern and western divisions of which they are pretty equally divided; and, in Mr Wallace s opinion, 1 they attain their maximum of beauty and variety in Borneo and Sumatra, from the latter of which islands comes the species, Pitta elegans, represented in the accompanying woodcut. Few Birds can vie with the Pittas in brightly-contrasted coloration. Deep velvety black, pure white, and intensely vivid scarlet, turquoise-blue and beryl-green mostly occupying a considerable extent of surface are found in a great many of the species, to say nothing of other composite or inter mediate hues ; and, though in some a modification of these tints is observable, there is scarcely a trace of any blend ing of shade, each patch of colour standing out distinctly. 1 Owing to recent discoveries in Papuasia it is possible that this opinion may require some modification. This is perhaps the more remarkable as the feathers have hardly any lustre to heighten the effect produced, and in some species the brightest colours are exhibited by the plumage of the lower parts of the body. Pittas vary in size from that of a Jay to that of a Lark, and generally have a strong bill, a thickset form, which is mounted on rather high legs with scutellated &quot; tarsi,&quot; and a very short tail. In many of the forms there is little or no external difference between the sexes. All the species then known were figured in Mr Elliot s Monograph of the Pittidee, com pleted in 1863 ; but so many have since been described that this work but imperfectly represents the existing know ledge of the Family, and even Schlegel s revised catalogue of the specimens contained in the Leyden Museum (Mus. des Pays-Bas, livr. 11), published in 1874, is now out of date, so that a new synopsis is very desirable. Many of the lately-discovered species have been figured in Gould s Birds of Asia and Birds of Ntiv Guinea. Placed by some authorities among the Pittidee is the genus Philepitta, consisting of two species peculiar to Madagascar, while other systematists would consider it to form a distinct Family. This last is the conclusion arrived at by W. A. Forbes (Proc. Zool. Society, 1880, pp. 387- 391) from its syringeal characters, which, though shewing it to be allied to the Pittas, are yet sufficiently different to justify its separation as the type of a Family PhttepittidsR. The two species which compose it have little outward resemblance to the Pittas, not having the same style of coloration and being apparently of more arboreal habits. The sexes differ greatly in plumage, and the males have the skin round the eyes bare of feathers and carunculated. It may be advisable to remark that nomenclatorial purists, objecting to the names Pitta and Phil f pitta as &quot;barbarous,&quot; call the former Coloburis and the latter Paictes. Brachyurus also has frequently been used for Pitta-, but, having been previously applied in another sense, it is inadmissible. (A. N.) PITTACUS of Mytilene in Lesbos, one of the seven sages of Greece, was born in 651 B.C. His father Hyrradius (or Caicus) was a Thracian, his mother was a Lesbian. About 611 B.C. Pittacus, along with the brothers of the poet Alcaeus, overthrew Melanchrus, tyrant of Lesbos. In a war between the Mytilenians and Athenians for the possession of the town of Sigeum on the Helle spont, Pittacus, as general of the Mytilenians, slew the Athenian commander Phrynon in single combat, having entangled him in a net (606 B.C.). In 589 his fellow- citizens entrusted Pittacus with despotic power for the purpose of protecting them against the exiled nobles, at the head of whom were Alcaeus and Antimenides. Pittacus effected this object, and, without introducing a new con stitution, contrived by legislation to restore the existing constitution to regular working order. One of his laws enacted that offences committed during intoxication should be punished with double severity. For the historian of the law of inheritance some interest attaches to the enact ment of Pittacus that father and mother should succeed, in equal shares, to the property of a deceased child. He resigned the government after holding it for ten years, and died ten years later (569 B.C.). The stories which bring Pittacus and Crcesus into connexion are probably mere legend, since Crcesus was only twenty-live years of age at the date of Pittacus s death. Pittacus was regarded as a pattern of all the virtues, and this high character is borne out by what ve know of him. When Alcreus, who had bitterly assailed him in his poems, fell into his hands, he let him go, saying that forgiveness was better than revenge. Of the lands which his grateful countrymen would have bestowed on him he accepted only a small part. Amongst the sayings attributed to him are these : it is hard to be good ; rule reveals the man ; the best rule is that of law ; speak ill neither of friend nor foe. Pittacus was also a poet ; Diogenes Laertius states that he composed six hundred elegiac verses.