TYPES OF ABERRANT CIRCLES. 943 
liar instances. The crow has been most truly consi- 
dered the pre-eminent type of all birds*, it is also 
the type of a typical circle. It consequently unites, 
in itself, a greater number of properties than are to be 
found, individually, in any other genus of birds; as if, 
in fact, it had taken from all the other orders a portion 
of their peculiar qualities, for the purpose of exhibiting 
in what manner they could be combined. From the 
rapacious birds this “ type of types,” as the crow has 
been justly called, takes the power of soaring in the 
air, and of seizing upon living birds like the hawks, 
while its habit of devouring putrid substances, and 
picking out the eyes of young animals, is borrowed 
from the vultures. From the scansorial or climbing 
order it takes the faculty of pecking the ground, and 
discovering its food when hidden from the eye, while 
the parrot family gives it the taste for vegetable food, 
and furnishes it with great cunning, sagacity, and 
powers of imitation, even to counterfeiting the human 
voice. Next come the order of waders, who impart 
their quota to the perfection of the crow, by giving te 
it great powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, 
such being among the chief attributes of the grallatorial 
order. Lastly, the aquatic birds contribute their por- 
tion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power of feeding 
not only upon fish, which are their peculiar food, but 
actually of occasionally catching it.f In this wonderful 
manner do we find the crow partially invested with the 
united properties of all other birds, while in its own or- 
der —that of the Jnsessores, or perchers—it stands the 
pre-eminent type. Here, then, is an example of the 
characteristic properties of the type of a typical circle. 
(303.) Let us now look to the type of an aberrant circle. 
The woodpecker is of this description, for it is the pre- 
eminent type of the climbing birds (Scansores), which 
is an aberrant tribe. Here, instead of finding a com- 
bination of diversified characters, similar to those be- 
* Linn. Trans. vol. xiv. p. 445. 
+ Wilson’s American Ornithology, article, Fishing Crow. 
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