Thrush
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Thrush. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a family of singing birds, including the American robin and the bluebird. The so-called brown thrush or brown thrasher, a fine singer, belongs to another family, being related to the catbird and to the mockingbird. There are over 150 world thrushes, some twelve of which are found in the wooded regions of the United States and Canada. The most celebrated singers are the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, and the veery or Wilson's thrush. The prevailing color of all three is cinnamon or olive brown with spotted breasts. The hermit builds on the ground. The two others build in underbrush. The eggs are from three to five--of a greenish blue, like those of the robin, but smaller. Thoreau says: The wood thrush's is no opera music; it is not so much the composition as the strain, the tone, that interests us, cool bars of melody from the atmosphere of everlasting morning or evening. . . . Though heard at noon, there is the liquid coolness of things drawn from the bottom of springs. The thrush's song alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. I admire the moderation of this master. There is nothing tumultuous in his song. He launches forth one strain of pure, unmatchable melody, and then he pauses and gives the hearer and himself time to digest this, and then another and another at suitable intervals. Men talk of the rich song of other birds, the thrasher, mockingbird, nightingale. But I doubt, I doubt. In a poem written by Oliver Wendell Holmes for a banquet in honor of Whittier's seventieth birthday, he paid the modest Quaker poet the delicate compliment of calling him The wood thrush of Essex, Whose song echoes round us while he sits unseen.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
sometimes called INFAN-
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account of the bird family still largely holds: the American robin and bluebird remain thrushes (Turdidae), and the brown thrasher is still correctly placed with the catbird and mockingbird in a separate family. What has changed is the birds' fortunes rather than the science — the wood thrush Thoreau praised has lost roughly half its North American population since systematic breeding-bird surveys began in 1966, driven by forest fragmentation here and on its Central American wintering grounds, and it is now a flagship species for migratory-bird conservation. The Collier's 1921 entry, which breaks off at "sometimes called INFAN-", was heading for the other thrush: infantile sore mouth, the mouth infection now known as oral candidiasis and attributed to the yeast Candida albicans. That condition was largely untreatable in 1921 but has been routinely curable since nystatin arrived in the 1950s, and it became a familiar early marker of HIV infection from the 1980s.
Written for this edition, 2026.