328 CORVID.E, 



can hardly yet be drawn, and the elder Von Nordmann says 

 he has seen in the Crimea individuals intermediate between 

 the two. The common Jay, however, inhabits the forest- 

 districts to the west of the Black Sea to Constantinople, 

 and thence throughout Epirus and Greece. Col. Drum- 

 mond-Hay found it breeding in Crete. It inhabits nearly 

 all suitable districts throughout the European Continent, 

 and most of its islands*, as Sicily and Sardinia, but in the 

 south of Spain, as at Gibraltar, it is only a winter-visitant, 

 and it does not appear to cross the Mediterranean to Africa f 

 — Malta even being outside its range — and its place in 

 Algeria is taken by the very distinct G. cervlcalls. 



The beak is blackish horn-colour : the irides very pale 

 blue : on each side of the gape there is a black patch an 

 inch long ; face, forehead and crown dull-white tinged with 

 buft', each feather tipped with black, which, as the feathers be- 

 come elongated, takes the form of a median stripe, until behind 

 the line of the eyes these stripes pass into purplish-cinnamon 

 curiously barred with a distinct shade of the same colour ; 

 the nape, scapulars and back, cinnamon ; wing-coverts 

 barred with very pale blue, deepening into bright cobalt-blue 

 and then into black, across the exposed part of the web, 

 the hidden part being nearly uniform black ; primaries dusky 

 black, externally edged with dull white ; secondaries velvet 

 black, each with a well-defined white patch, often tinged 

 with blue, on the basal half of the outer web ; outer tertials 

 velvet-black, indistinctly barred with blue and black at the 

 base of the outer web ; inmost tertials rich chestnut ; rump 

 and upper tail-coverts pure white ; tail-feathers blackish- 

 brown, indistinctly barred Avitli pale blue at the base ; chin 

 and throat dull white ; breast and belly pale cinnamon 

 deepening in colour on the flanks ; vent and lower tail- 

 coverts dull white ; Avings and tail-feathers beneath smoke- 

 grey : legs, toes and claws, pale brown. 



The whole length varies from thirteen inches and three- 



* Mr. Cecil Smith excludes it from his recent ' Birds of Guernsey '. 

 t Unless, indeed, the G. minor described from Algeria by J. P. Verreaux be, 

 as Mr. Dresser states, the young of G. fjhindarius. 



