A revision of the genus Turdinus and genera allied to it, with an enumeration of the specimens contained in the Leyden Museum

When looking over the material in the Leyden Museum of what is at present generally understood as the genus Turdinus and closely allied genera, I found it in many instances extremely difficult, even with the aid of the key to the genera in Sharpe’s Catalogue of Birds, vol. VII, to find out the genus in which a great number of species usually are placed. This inconvenience is greatly due to the want of well-marked characters in a number of closely related genera, while, on the other hand, genera have been united which, on account of a sufficient number of striking differences, would better be kept separate. There is, for instance, no necessity whatever for uniting the genus Malacocincla like genus as Turdinus, with the very different, thrushwhile, on the other hand, genera Erythrocichla, Drymocataphus, Trichostoma and Malacopteron are much more closely allied amongst each other and to Malacocincla than this latter is to Turdinus 1).