HINTS TO ORNITHOLOGISTS. z95 



birds partake of a vegetable and an insect diet, so 

 are these bristles more or less developed. But the 

 fallacy of this theory is manifest in the ordinary 

 habits of the barn-door fowl, the wigeon, and many 

 other birds. During the summer months, the barn- 

 door fowl, whilst cropping the grass and herbs, will 

 capture, with the utmost facility and avidity, every 

 insect, great or small, or soft or hard, which is un- 

 fortunate enough to be within its reach. The diet 

 of the wigeon is grass.- Still, neither the wigeon, 

 nor the barn-door fowl, have bristles at the beak. 



The claws of rapacious birds are pronounced to 

 be " retractile." If they are so, then the knowledge 

 of internal anatomy would force us to pronounce 

 the claws of other tribes of birds, such as the 

 robins, the doves, the barn-door fowls, and a thou- 

 sand others, to be retractile. 



The soldier must spend many a day amid the 

 roar of hostile cannon, before he becomes qualified 

 to command an army; the carpenter ought to 

 work for years in the dock-yard, ere he attempts to 

 build a line-of-battle ship ; and the schoolmaster 

 1ms to pore over many a scientific volume, in order 

 to prepare himself to teach the mathematics. 



But, somehow or other, it happens, now-a-days, 

 that practical knowledge does not seem to be con- 

 sidered essentially necessary for those who under- 

 take to write on certain parts of Natural History. 

 Thus, some there are who will offer their history 

 of birds to the public, although it can be ascer- 

 tained that they have never been in the country 

 which those birds inhabit. Others again, not 



