CROW. 



275 



CORVID^E. 



COBVUS CORNIX, Linnaeus*. 

 THE GREY CROW. 

 Corvus comix. 



find that, in the districts in which both occur, they breed 

 together commonly and indiscriminately, that the offspring 

 sometimes combine the characters of both parents, and 

 sometimes favour one or the other of them, or that in the 

 same brood all three phases appear, or again that the pro- 

 geny of parents belonging to one form may present all the 

 characteristics of the other, it seems almost impossible for a 

 scientific naturalist to retain the time-honoured belief that 

 the two forms are distinct species. Though the Editor utters 

 this opinion with some diffidence, that diffidence chiefly 



* Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 156 (1766). 



