58 Short Communications : -^ 



necessary to use the knife in similar cases. When once the 

 bill of a bird has begun to grow out in this manner, it will 

 always continue to do so ; and, though cut, will very soon 

 increase again ; in the instance of the goldfinch above- 

 mentioned, the lower mandible continued to grow out for six 

 or eight months before the upper one commenced, but both 

 now increase equally fast. This elongation of the mandibles 

 has never taken place in any of the numerous species of 

 warblers (Sylvianae) which I have kept, and now keep, in cap- 

 tivity ; though the birds of the robin kind appear extremely 

 subject to it. Among other species, I have noticed it in 

 the tree sparrow (Passer arboreus, Pringilla montana L.) — 

 Edward Blyth. Tooting^ Surrey^ Nov. 26. 1 833. 



The crossing of the mandibles in the crossbill itself seems 

 liable to a variation in the mode. Mr. Yarrell, in his Treatise 

 on the beak of the crossbill. Zoological Journal^ iv. 459., has 

 this remark : — "In some individuals the upper mandible is 

 turned to the right, the lower mandible curved to the left ; in 

 others, the position of the mandibles is reversed as to their 

 direction." 



In continued frosts, one occasionally sees a robin, or other 

 species of bird, with the distal half, more or less, of one, 

 usually the upper, of its mandibles absent; broken off, perhaps 

 by a shot, perhaps by the bird's violent application of it to the 

 ground, then frozen " hard as a stone," to remove thence some 

 object of food. As the portion which is left of the fractured 

 mandible usually exhibits some bloodiness, the bird, the fate 

 of Mr. Blyth's siskin suggests, bleeds to death. If not, it 

 may be presumed that it must die of starvation, from its 

 inability, from the absence of the more prehensive part of 

 one mandible, to pick up a sufficiency of food for sustaining 

 itself.— J. Z). 



Excrescences on the Head and other Parts of the Common 

 Hedge Chanter [Acc^7itor modiddris Cuv.) (VI. 153.) — In the 

 instances which have come under my notice, I am confident 

 they were of extremely rapid formation. A short time since, 

 one of these birds was brought to me, weak and exhausted for 

 want of food ; really a hideous object, with numerous large 

 excrescences on different parts, some of which completely 

 blocked up the nostrils, and twisted the beak out of all form, 

 completely incapacitating it from taking any kind of food, but 

 which was nevertheless extremely plump and in good condi- 

 tion. I once observed excrescences somewhat similar rise in 

 the course of four days on the head and knee (the real heel) 

 of a tree pipit (^aithus arboreus), one of which was very nearly 

 as large as the head itself. — Edward Blyth, Tooting^ Surrey, 

 Nov, 26. 1833. 



