206 OMNIVORJE. 



habits, and so different from our common British birds, that 

 one regrets that they cannot be at least have not been 

 enlisted among the dwellers in our woodlands. Our climate 

 would preclude some of them, but not the nut-cracker or the 

 roller, which are as common in the forests of Germany as the 

 jay is in our groves and coppices. 



BIRDS CLASSED FROM THE STRUCTURE OF THEIR TOES. 



The old order, Passeres, " little birds," or birds of " the 

 sparrow kind," contained so very many genera of different 

 characters, that it was vague, and conveyed so little informa- 

 tion, that it was nearly useless. The term Scansores, or 

 " climbers," applied to certain descriptions of birds, of which 

 there are but few British genera, and not very many species, 

 was not much more definite, because those are not the only 

 birds that climb they only climb in a particular way, or by 

 means of a peculiar structure of feet ; and therefore the use 

 of the word " climbing," as applied to them, was making a 

 term, which is quite general and clear in itself, stand for one 

 of its own peculiar meanings, in the same way as if the word 

 " motion" were applied to express some particular kind of 

 motion that required a particular epithet, such as "flying" or 

 " swimming." 



The more judicious ornithologists have therefore founded 

 the name on the organ itself, and not on the function of that 

 organ; and as the organ is a substance, and the function 

 only an act, the method is far more clear and satisfactory. 



Of the birds already noticed, there are many that can 

 perch on a stick, branch, or twig, or even on a blunt point ; 

 and they can walk, by stepping from stick to stick, or from 

 point to point, without assistance from their wings. They 

 can also walk along a round pole, if it be a thick one ; but 

 they cannot move lengthways on a slender one, in any other 

 way than by shuffling sidelong, or hold their balance on it, 

 unless they perch across. As little can they walk up or 



