GCs. DEN-CROWNED THRUSIL. 155 
strate faculties of mind; not only innate, but acquired ideas, (derived 
from necessity in a state of domestication,) which we call understanding 
and knowledge. We see that this bird could associate those ideas, 
arrange and apply them in a rational manner, according to circum- 
stances. Jor instance, if he knew that 1t was the hard, sharp corners 
of.the crumb of bread that hurt his gullet, and prevented him from 
swallowing it, and that water would soften and render it easy to be 
swallowed, this knowledge must be acquired by observation and expe- 
rience; or some other bird taught him. Here the bird perceived, by 
the effect, the cause, and then took the quickest, the most effectual, 
and agreeable method to remove that cause. What could the wisest 
man have done better? Call it reason, or instinct, it is the same that 
a sensible man would have done in this case. 
“ After the same manner this bird reasoned with respect to the 
wasps. He found, by experience and observation, that the first he 
attempted to swallow hurt his throat, and gave him extreme pain; and, 
upon examination, observed that. the extremity of the abdomen was 
armed with a poisonous sting; and, after this discovery, never attempt- 
ed to swallow a wasp until he first. pinched his abdomen to the ex- 
tremity, forcing out the sting, with the receptacle of poison.” : 
It is certainly a circumstance highly honorable to the character of 
birds, and corroborative of the foregoing sentiments, that those who 
have paid the most minute attention to their manners, are uniformly 
their advocates and admirers. “He must,” said a gentleman to me 
the other day, when speaking of another person, “he must be a 
good man; for those who have long known him, and are most intimate 
with him, respect him greatly, and always speak well of him.” 
S 
eee Sane 
GOLDEN-CROWNED THRUSH.* —TURDUS 
AUROCAPILLUS. — Fic. 59. 
t 
Edw. 252, — Lath. iii.21,— La Figuier a téte d’or, Briss. iii. 504. —La Grivelette 
de St. Domingue, Buff. iii. 317. Pl. ent. 398.— Arct. Zool. p. 339, No. 203.— 
Turdus minimus, vertice aureo, The Least Golden-crown Thrush, Bartram, p. 
290. — Peale’s Museum, No. 7122. : 
SEIURUS AUROCAPILLUS. — Swainson. 
Sylvia aurocapilla, Bonap. Synop. p.77.— Seitirus aurocapillus, North. Zool. ii. 227. 
Tuover the epithet Golden-crowned is not very suitable for this 
bird, that part of the head being rather of a brownish orange, yet, to 
avoid confusion, I have retained it. 
* This curious species, with the S. aquaticus, No. 109, and some others, dif- 
fers materially in economy from the Thyushes, notwithstanding their general 
form and colors; and, to judge from the account of the manners of our present 
species given by Wilson, it will approach very closely to Anthus, and our A. arbo- 
reus, and in form and structure to some of the Warblers. The manners of S. 
aquaticus, again, resemble more those of the Wagtails; but it has somewhat of 
