548 BRITISH BIRDS. 
blood in him than the female, having a very grey ring round the neck, 
and showed a good deal of grey on the breast and under the wings. My 
total bag of Crows at the Ku-ray’-i-ka was three thoroughbred Hoodies 
(two males and a female), ten thoroughbred Carrions (nine males and one 
female), and fifteen hybrids (seven males and eight females). These 
figures, as far as they go, lead me to the conclusion that the female 
Carrion-Crows were all breeding, away in the woods, so that I rarely got 
a shot at one; whereas the female hybrids were most of them barren, so 
that I was able to shoot as many of one sex as of the other. 
Some writers who have not succeeded in overcoming their pre-Darwinian 
prejudices against the interbreeding of allied forms have endeavoured to 
show that the interbreeding of the Carrion and the Hoodie Crows is an 
exceptional case—an instance of so-called “ dimorphism,” and that the 
offspring of these “ mixed marriages ” partake of the peculiarities of either 
one or other of their parents or revert back to them before they become 
fully adult. So far as I have been able to discover, the evidence in favour 
of this view rests upon the unsupported testimony of gamekeepers and 
shepherds, than which no evidence could be more unreliable. I have no doubt 
that the comparative rarity of intermediate forms between these two sub- 
species is caused entirely by their comparative barrenness. The two 
Crows are probably more differentiated than the two European Nuthatches 
or the two Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, or than some of the nearly allied 
Tits; but the difference between them can only be considered of subspecific 
value, and the full name and title of the Hooded Crow is Corvus corone, 
var. cornix, though, as in other similar cases, the binomial name will 
generally be used for the sake of brevity. 
The thoroughbred Hooded Crow has the wings, tail, head, throat 
(extending as far as the upper part of the breast), and thighs black. The 
rest of the body is ashy grey, slightly darker on the under tail-coverts. 
The upper tail-coverts begin grey, gradually become darker in the centre, 
until they are only edged with grey, and finally become black as they join 
the tail. Legs, feet, and claws black; irides dark brown. The female 
resembles the male in colour, but is slightly smaller in size. The nestling 
plumage does not differ from that of the adult except in being much 
duller. 
