JAY 467 
few of them has the plumage the metallic glossiness it generally 
presents in the Pies, while the proverbial beauty of the “ Jay’s 
wing” is due to the vivid tints of blue—turquoise and cobalt, 
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 glandarius, 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. Nat. ili. 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 simple 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— 
