JAY 



467 



few of them has the plumage the metallic glossiness it generally 

 presents in the Pies, Avhile the proverbial beauty of the " Jay's 

 is due to the vivid tints of blue — turquoise and cobalt, 



wnig 



heightened by bars of jet-black, an indication of the same style of 

 ornament being observable in the greater number of the other 

 forms of the group, and in some predominating over nearly the 

 whole surface. Of the many genera that have been proposed by 

 ornithologists, perhaps about nine may be deemed sufficiently well 

 established. 



The ordinary European Jay, Garrulus glandarms, has of late 

 years suffered so much persecution in the British Islands as to have 

 become in many districts a rare bird. In Ireland it seems now to 



Jay. 



be indigenous to the southern half of the island only ; in England 

 generally, it is far less numerous than formerly ; and Mr. Lumsden 

 (Scott. JSfat. iii. pp. 230-240) has shewn that in Scotland its 

 numbers have decreased with still greater rapidity. It would 

 possibly have been exterminated by this time but for its stock 

 being supplied in autumn by immigration, and for its shy and wary 

 behaviour, especially in the breeding-season, when it becomes almost 

 wholly mute, and thereby often escapes detection. No truthful 

 man, however much he may love the bird, will gainsay the depre- 

 dations on fruit and eggs that it at times commits ; but the 

 gardeners and gamekeepers of Britain fall into the usual error of 

 persons imperfectly acquainted with the ways of Nature, and, 

 instead of taking a few simjile steps to guard their charge from 

 injury, or at most of killing the individual birds from which 

 they suffer, deliberately adopt methods of wholesale destruction — 



