158 An Ornithological Letter from Mentone. 



Oct. 12, when paying a first visit to the Jardin des Plantes, 

 after I had pai'tially swallowed the disappointment and wonder- 

 ment caused me by the vast attention paid to cocks and hens and 

 les Canards d' Aylesbury , my step was arrested in front of a cage 

 tenanted by a white variety of the Common Jay [Garrulus glan- 

 darius), the bird being entirely white as to plumage, having 

 dark eyes, while its beak, tarsi, and feet were flesh-colour. On 

 seeing this bird, I instantly recollected a pair of White Starlings 

 (variety of Sturnus vulgaris) which I had the opportunity of 

 seeing in a cage last summer. They had been taken near 

 Swansea, in a pigeon-house, one hole of which the parent birds 

 had usurped, and there tended these, their offspring, in company 

 with two others of the ordinary dusky hue. Now, these White 

 Starlings were likewise entirely white, having dark eyes, with 

 beak, tarsi, and feet flesh-colour. Is it fair to attempt to draw 

 the inference from the two cases that the tendency to become 

 albino among birds is expressed rather by the pinkish colour 

 of the extremities than of the eyes ? 



From Paris we gained the south without making any note 

 worth reporting, the birds being even fewer than usual because 

 of the absence of the Royston Crow {Corvus comix), which was 

 not then in France. When toiling over the Turbith Mountain, 

 lying between Nice and Mentone, I saw the handsome Black 

 Wheatear flitting from place to place among the rugged torrents 

 of stone that lie in the hollows of the mountain, his black dress 

 relieved by his white tail and tail-coverts. His sprightly manners 

 and his love for the highest point of the highest stone reminded 

 me strongly of our own Saxicola cenanthe, which he also resembled 

 in size. I am quite unable to say whether I should call him 

 Saxicola cachinnans or S. stapazina, as the males of both of these 

 species are at this season remarkably alike in colouring. After 

 this, we had not gone far before Mentone appeared in view — 

 a compact town gathered on a promontory which, running a short 

 way into the sea, suffices to divide the main bay into eastern and 

 western bays, while a grand amphitheatre of rocky mountains 

 protects from the northerly winds the entire sweep, as the range 

 rises for the most part from the sea-level. The slopes nearest 

 the sea are devoted to lemons, oranges, olives; and as these trees 



