304 



CORVID.E. 



birds. At the same time it must be stated that Rooks with 

 feathered faces are not unfrequently found living at large ; 

 but all such are most likely birds of the year, which from 

 some constitutional cause have not yet divested themselves 

 of this mark of nonage. Though one of the mandibles is 

 sometimes prolonged to nearly twice its normal length, or 

 both are so curved as to render the beak quite useless as a 

 digging implement, few people have seen a Rook shewing 

 overgrowth that had not a bare face ; but, say the advocates 

 of the abrasion-theory, it is possible that the nudity had been 

 produced before the alteration of form had taken place, and 

 that the bulbs whence the feathers arise, having been once 

 injured, might afterwards remain unproductive. 



Japan, China and possibly Eastern Siberia are inhabited 

 by a Rook, Corvus pastinator, differing from our own in 

 having the throat always feathered and a few other slight 

 characters.* 



* Some ornithologists have broken np the genus Corvxs still further than was 

 done when the Ties, Jays and a few other natural groups were removed from it ; 

 hut as regards its European members with no great success. Thus the Raven 

 being left as the type-species, the Crow, Rook and Daw have been placed in 

 genera respectively called Corone, Tri/panocorax and Cofceus — all the invention 

 of Kaup, the first and hist in 182!), and the second, of which Bonaparte had 

 prior notice (Consp. Av. i. p. 384), in a communication to the meeting of the 

 German Ornithologists' Society at Gotha (Journ. fiir Orn. 1854, p. lv. note), 



Linnarus has been blamed by some writers for giving the present species a 

 trivial name so misleading as frugilegus. It may be remarked that herein he 

 only acted according to his well-known principles, preserving the name by which 

 it, was almost universally known, and still surviving, according to some, in the 

 French Freux, though M. Little derives this from the Teutonic If ninth, the 

 source of our own Rook. 



