328 



can hardly yet be drawn, and the elder Yon Nordmann says 

 he has seen in the Crimea individuals intermediate between 

 the two. The common Jay, however, inhabits the forest- 

 districts to the west of the Black Sea to Constantinople, 

 and thence throughout Epirus and Greece. Col. Drum- 

 mond-Hay found it breeding in Crete. It inhabits nearly 

 all suitable districts throughout the European Continent, 

 and most of its islands*, as Sicily and Sardinia, but in the 

 south of Spain, as at Gibraltar, it is only a winter-visitant, 

 and it does not appear to cross the Mediterranean to Africa f 

 Malta even being outside its range and its place in 

 Algeria is taken by the very distinct G. cervicalis. 



The beak is blackish horn-colour : the hides very pale 

 blue : on each side of the gape there is a black patch an 

 inch long ; face, forehead and crown dull- white tinged with 

 buff, each feather tipped with black, which, as the feathers be- 

 come elongated, takes the form of a median stripe, until behind 

 the line of the eyes these stripes pass into purplish-cinnamon 

 curiously barred with a distinct shade of the same colour ; 

 the nape, .scapulars and back, cinnamon ; wing-coverts 

 barred with very pale blue, deepening into bright cobalt-blue 

 and then into black, across the exposed part of the web, 

 the hidden part being nearly uniform black ; primaries dusky 

 black, externally edged with dull white; secondaries velvet 

 black, each with a well-defined white patch, often tinged 

 with blue, on the basal half of the outer web ; outer tertials 

 velvet-black, indistinctly barred with blue and black at the 

 base of the outer web ; inmost tertials rich chestnut ; rump 

 and upper tail-coverts pure white ; tail-feathers blackish- 

 brown, indistinctly barred with pale blue at the base ; chin 

 and throat dull white ; breast and belly pale cinnamon 

 deepening in colour on the flanks ; vent and lower tail- 

 coverts dull white ; wings and tail-feathers beneath smoke- 

 grey : legs, toes and claws, pale brown. 



The whole length varies from thirteen inches and three- 



* Mr. Cecil Smith excludes it from his recent ' Birds of Guernsey '. 

 f Unless, indeed, the G. minor described from Algeria by J. P. Verreaux be, 

 as Mr. Dresser states, the young of G. glandarius. 



