288 



CORVID^. 



held. Its mode of hiding portions of food that cannot at 

 the time be conveniently eaten naturally suggests an amount 

 of forethought that can pardonably be exaggerated. In the 

 same way any one who has listened to the strange sounds which 

 a Crow will divert itself by uttering for half an hour together, 

 or the various tones * in which it will call to and be answered 

 by a distant comrade, can well understand how the faculty of 

 intelligible speech came to be attributed to this bird. In- 

 deed it is hardly possible for us to deny it the power of 

 carrying on a conversation of some sort, for it is admitted 

 that while most birds by their notes express alarm, pleasure 

 and certain other feelings, none has a greater capacity for 

 indicating different sensations (whatever they may be) by its 

 articulations, and it is not surprising that the varied notes 

 of the Crow have met with many attempts at interpretation 

 on the part of the rural population of this country and 

 others, some of them being highly humorous, f 



* Macgillivray professes to have recognized a difference in the voices of the 

 two forms, but the Editor believes there is none, and herein his opinion is corro- 

 borated by Mr. Seebohm, whose testimony, from the opportunities he has en- 

 joyed of hearing both almost simultaneously, is of great value. 



f The Grey Crow is the subject of a monograph in Dutch by Dr. N. Meursinge 

 ' Verhandeling over de Bonte Kraai ' (Groningen : 1851, Svo, 332 pp.). 



