SEDGE-BIRD—SENEGALI $25 
described, one of the best accounts of them being by Verreaux 
(Proc. Zool. Soc. 1856, pp. 348-352). Its chief prey consists of 
insects and reptiles, and as a foe to snakes it is held in high esteem. 
Making every allowance for exaggeration, it seems to possess a 
strange partiality for the destruction of the latter, and successfully 
attacks the most venomous species, striking them with its knobbed 
wings and kicking forwards at them with its feet, until they are 
rendered incapable of offence, when it swallows them. The nest is 
a huge structure, placed in a bush or tree, and in it two white eggs, 
spotted with rust-colour, are laid. The young remain in the nest 
for a long while, and even when four months old are unable to 
stand upright. They are very frequently brought up tame, and 
become agreeable not to say useful pets about a house, the chief 
drawbacks to them being that when hungry they will help them- 
selves to the small poultry, and the liability of their legs to fracture, 
which follows on any sudden alarm, and causes death. The 
Secretary-bird is found, but not very abundantly and only in some 
localities, over the greater part of Africa, especially in the south, 
extending northwards on the west to the Gambia and in the 
interior to Khartum, where Von Heuglin observed it breeding. 
The systematic position of the genus Serpentarius has long been 
a matter of discussion, and is still one of much interest, though of 
late classifiers have been pretty well agreed in placing it in the 
Order Accipitres. Most of them, however, have shewn great want 
of perception by putting it in the Family Falconidx. No anatomist 
can doubt its forming a peculiar Family, Serpentariidz, differing 
more from the Falconide than do the Vultwridw; and the fact of 
Prof. A. Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. Fr. ii. pp. 465-468, pl. 186, 
figs. 1-6) having recognized in the Miocene of the Allier the fossil 
bone of a species of this genus, S. robustus, proves that it is an 
ancient form, one possibly carrying on a direct and not much 
modified descent from a generalized form, whence may have sprung 
not only the Falconidx but perhaps the progenitors of the Ardeidx 
and Ciconiidx, to say nothing of others. 
SEDGE-BIRD, the common name for what in most books is 
called the Sedge-WARBLER. 
SEGGE, Angl.-Sax. Sugge (especially in composition as Heges- 
sugge), an old name, apparently for any small bird, that seems still 
to survive in places for the Hedge-Sparrow ; but taking also the 
form Heysuck (cf. HAy-JACK) and even corrupted into Isaac. 
SENEGALIT, a dealers’ name which should properly belong to 
the Fringilla senegala of Linneus, the Estrilda or Lagonosticta senegala 
of some modern writers, but seems to be often applied in a general 
way to small species of Ploceidx (WEAVER-BIRD) from West Africa, 
or perhaps even other countries. 
