Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/78

 CHAPTER XI.

THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE.

next Tribe of Perching Birds is the Tenuirostres or

Thinbills, the most ill-assorted group, I think, of the whole system. Modern classification has scattered it, of course. The bond of union as the name implies, is a long and slender bill, but some birds have to be included, by reason of other marks of affinity, whose bills are neither long nor slender, while the snipe and curlew are excluded because they do not come