206 AFFINITIES AND GEOGEAPHICAL 



Intelligent, wary, social, omnivorous, though some tend more 

 to flesh-eating than others, the Crow family is everywhere well 

 marked ; everywhere are they an object of marvel and curious 

 study to our species, to whom it almost appears as if their 

 voices were a kind of speech. In the genealogy of animals, 

 their place is extremely important, for to scarcely any has so 

 vast and various a progeny been given. It clearly appears 

 that various crows, the Raven, Rook, Jay, Pie, etc., are the 

 heads of so many distinct families, which have assumed various 

 sub-characters in different regions of the globe, according as 

 they were affected by external conditions ; " a mighty maze, 

 but not without a plan." 



Taking the predaceous corvidas first they start in the Raven 

 of the old world, and misnamed Black Vulture of America, 

 the largest of all the species ; animals keen-scented, cautious, 

 yet fierce, and which do not scruple even to attack some of the 

 larger mammalia. In our continent, we see the raven and 

 carrion crow followed by the hooded crow, which, being only 

 a reduced image of its predecessor, will without much difficulty 

 pair with the former, and produce a prolific offspring. 



The crows are classed by naturalists as Conirostres ; that is, 

 having a conical beak. The beak is, nevertheless, considerably 

 curved in the predaceous species, so as to approach the hooked 

 form : in the American carrion crow it is as decidedly hooked 

 as that of any raptorial bird. This should prepare us for 

 hearing of series of birds descended from the predaceous crows, 

 with that reduced kind of raptorial beak which having a curve 

 and a notch or tooth in the upper mandible, gives them in 

 classification the name of Dentirostres. One of these genera 

 is the Shrikes or Butcher Birds (Laniadce), a numerous and 

 widely-diffused assemblage, living upon the smaller birds and 

 insects, the former of which the shrike sticks, when killed, upon 

 thorns, as a butcher hangs up meat in his stall ; hence the 

 name of the genus. From the shrikes also proceed certain 

 genera of eminently insectivorous habits, and some of which, 

 in accordance with that kind of prey, have the reduced form of 

 beak called fissirostral, accompanied by a great width of gape 

 namely, the Swallows, Swifts, and Martins, (Hirundinida?) ; 

 the Nightjars and Goatsuckers (Caprimulgidce), which, feeding 

 by night, are to the swallows what the owls are to the falcons ; 

 also the Fly-catchers (Muscicapidce), a genus so near to the 

 shrikes in aspect, that several of the species have been classed 

 by various naturalists in that group. 



