THE CKOW. 



to fear but a bad conscience no doubt makes nim a 

 coward. 



What are his relations to the Jungle-crow (Corvus mac- 

 rorhynchus) I do not know. Every now and then one 

 hears, even in Calcutta, the provincial accents of this Mo- 

 fussilite, and catches sight of him, easily distinguishable 

 from the urban bird by his greater size and entirely black 

 plumage. Is the smaller bird the master not an un- 

 known case among allied species or is the size of the 

 Jungle-crow a disadvantage to him when flying amongst 

 buildings ? At any rate, one has to get some distance 

 away from Calcutta before one finds the big black Crow at 

 all common. Yet he has a very wide range, from Gilgit 

 where he meets the true raven with which he is some- 

 times confounded, to Siam and Singapore ; and he is 

 also the Crow of the Andamans, so that he must possess 

 considerable powers of adapting himself to circumstances. 

 But, from the fact that the Himalayan birds are the small- 

 est and those from the Andamans and Burma the largest, 

 we may infer that he likes a hot stuffy climate better than 

 a cool bracing one. It is the other way with the true 

 raven (Corvus cor ax), which is easily distinguished by his 

 greater size and the beard of pointed hackles on his throat, 

 for this bird is largest and finest in the hills and dwindles 

 into a puny race when he lives in the plains ; but he is 

 always considerably bigger than the Jungle-crow. 



Our familiar Calcutta friend is mostly confined to India, 

 and to low elevations there, and does not seem to vary 

 much in size, though in the drier parts his neck gets nearly 

 white, and in Ceylon so much darker that it attracts the 



