SEDGE-BIRD SENEGALI 825 



described, one of the best accounts of them being by Verreaux 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1856, pp. 348-352). Its chief prey consists of 

 insects and reptiles, and as a foe to snakes it is held in high esteem. 

 Making every allowance for exaggeration, it seems to possess a 

 strange partiality for the destruction of the latter, and successfully 

 attacks the most venomous species, striking them with its knobbed 

 wings and kicking forwards at them with its feet, until they are 

 rendered incapable of offence, when it swallows them. The nest is 

 a huge structure, placed in a bush or tree, and in it two white eggs, 

 spotted with rust-colour, are laid. The young remain in the nest 

 for a long while, and even when four months old are unable to 

 stand upright. They are very frequently brought up tame, and 

 become agreeable riot to say useful pets about a house, the chief 

 drawbacks to them being that when hungry they will help them- 

 selves to the small poultry, and the liability of their legs to fracture, 

 which follows on any sudden alarm, and causes death. The 

 Secretary-bird is found, but not very abundantly and only in some 

 localities, over the -greater part of Africa, especially in the south, 

 extending northwards on the west to the Gambia and in the 

 interior to Khartum, where Von Heuglin observed it breeding. 



The systematic position of the genus Serpentarius has long been 

 a matter of discussion, and is still one of much interest, though of 

 late classifiers have been pretty well agreed in placing it in the 

 Order Acdpitres. Most of them, however, have shewn great want 

 of perception by putting it in the Family Falconidse. No anatomist 

 can doubt its forming a peculiar Family, Serpentariidse, differing 

 more from the Falconidse than do the Vulturidx ; and the fact of 

 Prof. A. Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. Fr. ii. pp. 465-468, pi. 186, 

 figs. 1-6) having recognized in the Miocene of the Allier the fossil 

 bone of a species of this genus, 8. robustus, proves that it is an 

 ancient form, one possibly carrying on a direct and not much 

 modified descent from a generalized form, whence may have sprung 

 not only the Falconidse but perhaps the progenitors of the Ardeidse 

 and Ciconiidte, to say nothing of others. 



SEDGE-BIRD, the common name for what in most books is 

 called the Sedge- WARBLER. 



SEGGE, Angl.-Sax. Sugge (especially in composition as Heges- 

 sugge), an old name, apparently for any small bird, that seems still 

 to survive in places for the Hedge-SPARROW ; but taking also the 

 form Heysuck (cf. HAY-JACK) and even corrupted into Isaac. 



SENEGALI, a dealers' name which should properly belong to 

 the Fringilla senegala of Linnaeus, the Estrilda or Lagonosticta senegala 

 of some modern writers, but seems to be often applied in a general 

 way to small species of Ploceidse (WEAVER-BIRD) from West Africa, 

 or perhaps even other countries. 



