PIPING CROWS. 



153 



principal subsistence. One species is said to make the whole forest 

 vibrate with its various musical notes, which are clear, distinct, 

 sonorous, and pass nearly through the whole gamut. Some spe- 

 cies are found only in Australia, where they frequent cultivated 

 places, and even approach the dwellings and stock-yards of the 

 colonists ; but they prefer cleared lands, and open flats and 

 plains skirted by belts of trees. These feed chiefly on insects, 

 for which they search the ground ; and they devour immense 



Fig. So.-Thh White-b 



hina leucoitotus). 



numbers of locusts and grasshoppers. Their nests are formed 

 outwardly of sticks, leaves, wool, cSic, and lined with fine mate- 

 rials. The eggs are usually three or four in number. The most 

 remarkable feature, however, in these musical birds is found in 

 the structure of their windpipe, which on arriving at the lower 

 part of the neck, before entering the chest, makes three circular 

 turns between the skin and the muscles of the thorax, somewhat 

 resembling the convolutions of a French horn — an arrangement 

 to which they probably owe the power that they possess of modu- 



