160 



ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



into the precincts of the farm-yard, and carries off the 

 chickens from their roost. The celebrated American 

 ornithok^gist draws a starthng picture of the effect of 

 its nocturnal cries upon the lonely traveller benighted 

 in the forest or the wilderness, and roused from his 

 slumbers by a sudden shout sufficient to alarm a whole 

 garrison, or treated with a solo resembling the half- 

 suppressed screams of a person in the act of suffocation 

 from throttling. 



This species is but little inferior in size to that last 

 described, of which Buffon and Pennant regarded it as 

 a mere variety. It differs, however, in many essential 

 particulars. The whole upper surface exhibits a mix- 

 ture of dusky black, white, and tawny ; the throat is 

 pure white, circumscribed by a brownish band ; the rest 

 of the under parts are marked by innumerable narrow 

 transverse dusky bars, on a reddish ground-colour thinly 

 interspersed with white ; the legs and toes are light 

 brown; the tail barred with six or seven transverse 

 blackish bands ; the face brownish, bounded on either 

 side by a broad black band ; the tufts on the head 

 three inches in length, variegated with black and 

 brown ; the eyes bright yellow ; and the beak and 

 claws black. In the female, as in that of the preceding- 

 species, the white of the throat is less pure, and the 

 colours in general have a more sombre cast. 



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