1?0 SHRIKES. 



rows are called by the natives, marmot villages, and are 

 so numerous and extensive, that they will sometimes 

 spread over the face of the country for miles together. 

 If disturbed, the Owls, which are usually seated near the 

 burrows, either fly off a little way, and settle again, or 

 descend into the holes, from whence it is no easy matter 

 to dislodge them." 



Another traveller, Captain Sir Francis Head, when 

 travelling over some immense plains in South America, 

 called the Pampas, fell in with them in company with 

 the biscachos, an animal much resembling the above- 

 mentioned prairie-dogs, of very singular appearance, 

 nearly as large as badgers, but their heads not unlike a 

 rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers. In 

 the evening, they sit outside these holes, looking very 

 serious, as if moralizing, thoughtful, and grave. These 

 holes were guarded in the day-time by two of the above- 

 mentioned little Owls, who were never an instant away 

 from their post. As strangers gallop by, there the Owls 

 continue to sit, looking at them, first full in the face, 

 and then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads 

 in a manner which was quite ridiculous, when, as the 

 riders pass close to them, feargets the better of their 

 dignified looks, and they both run into the biscachos' 

 holes*. 



The next order which offers itself to our notice in the 

 tables of classification, is the 

 Passerine, subdivided into 

 seven tribes, the first of 

 which is the Crenirostral, 

 from two Latin words signi- 

 fying notchbilled, as they are 

 all more or less indented or 

 notched towards the extremity, as in the annexed figure. 

 In the preceding order the same peculiarity indeed 

 exists, but in the creni rostral tribe the beak is, generally 

 speaking, of a very different character, though in some 



* HEAD'S Rough Notes. 



