44 BLOOD-BIRD— BLUEBIRD 



The function of the blood is this : The arterial blood in the 

 cajDillaries of the body gives off its oxygen to the tissues of the 

 body ; the lymph, charged Avith the luitritive elements derived 

 through the process of digestion, bathes the same tissues by leaving 

 the capillaries, and is collected again into lymphatic vessels, being 

 ultimatelj^ emptied into the big veins of the body, to be mixed 

 again with the deoxydized blood returning likewise through the 

 veins from the capillaries of the whole body. All this exhausted 

 blood is, together with the lymph, received into the right auricle of 

 the heart, thence pumped through the right ventricle and the 

 pulmonarj'- arteries into the capillaries of the lungs, there to give 

 up its carbonic acid, and to be charged again with oxygen. 

 Returning through the pulmonary veins into the left auricle, and 

 thence into the left ventricle, it is forced by the contraction of the 

 latter into the arteries of the body to commence its circulation 

 aneAv. 



The lymijli is a fluid like the blood -plasm, slightly yelloAvish 

 or colourless and containing only white, but no red, blood- 

 corpuscles. 



BLOOD-BIED, one of the species of the genus Myzomela, 

 belonging to the MeUphagidm (Honey-sucker), so called in New 

 South Wales — M. sanguinolenta (Latham). (Gould, Handh. B. 

 Australia, i. p. 555.) 



BLOOD-OLPH, a not uncommon local name of the Bull- 

 finch. 



BLOOD-PHEASANT, the Anglo-Indian name for the Ifhaginis 

 cruentus of ornithologists, one of the most beautiful game-birds of 

 the mountains of Eastern Nepal and Sikkim, so called from the 

 blood-red blotches with which its otherwise green plumage is 

 diversified. A second species of the genus, /. geofroyi, has been 

 described from Northern China. By some systematists they are 

 referred to the subfamily Ferdicinse, by others to the Phasianinas. 

 (Jerdon, B. India, iii. p. 522.) 



BLUEBIRD, in North America the appropriate name of the no 

 less familiar than favourite Sialia wilsoni, or sialis of ornithology, 

 and of its congeners S. mexkana or ocddpniaUs'^ and »S'. ardica : — 

 the first, with a chestnut throat and breast, being an abundant bird 

 on the eastern side of the continent, appearing also in Bermuda ; 

 the second, with the middle of the back and breast chestnut, taking 



1 By some Avriteis S. mcxicana is regarded as distinct from S. oecidentalis, 

 and there seems little doubt that »S'. azurea of Central America may be considered 

 a good si)ecies. Mr. Seebohm {Cat. B. Brit. Mus. v. p. 328) places in this 

 genus the Grandala cxlicolor of the Himalaya and other mountain-ranges in 

 Asia. 



