I 1 8 THE CROWS. 



kind of food that their constitutions require. They 

 are like sailors fed on salt pork and ship's biscuit, 

 who must have a little lime juice regularly, or else 

 they will get scurvy. So these birds will get ill 

 unless you supply them with living insects occasion- 

 ally, and " Every Boy's Book" gives directions to 

 juvenile bird-fanciers for breeding meal-worms and 

 maggots. The " hard-billed " birds, on the contrary, 

 need little else than good seed and fresh water, for 

 that is their natural diet. For this reason the birds 

 of that tribe are more commonly kept as pets. Of 

 course there are many birds which do not fit quite 

 neatly into either division. The Starling, for exam- 

 ple, has not a very stout bill and will eat anything. 

 But this difficulty meets every system of classification. 

 Nature has not done birds up in bundles and labelled 

 them, and on whatever principle we attempt to sort 

 them, we soon find that there are many which seem 

 to belong to one lot in some respects and to another 

 lot in others. I have followed the arrangement 

 adopted by Dr. Jerdon, as I said at the beginning, 

 because his book is the only readable account of 

 Indian birds which yet exists, and it is not likely to be 

 superseded in our time. He divides the Conirostres, 

 as far as India is concerned, into four families, the 

 Crows, the Starlings, the Finches, and the Larks. 



To begin with the first, there is surely little for me 

 to say about the Common Crow. It speaks for itself. 

 We all know enough about it. And yet this is not 

 true, for in another sense we never know enough 

 about it. The subject is inexhaustible. In any 

 company in India, if conversation flags, bring the 

 Crow upon the tapis and it will start into animation 



