Birds. 3051 



the varied phenomena which arise before him in his survey of the 

 works of creation. I would say this, however, with diffidence, be- 

 - cause the circles, representatives and affinities, the typical and 

 aberrant species, and the osculant points of his system, are so com- 

 plicated, and require so numerous an array of precise and special 

 ideas to be present to the mind at one and the same moment, that I 

 have never been able to obtain a conception of it as a whole so dis- 

 tinct in its character as to be in any measure satisfactory or instructive. 

 I may thus be guilty of speaking against an arrangement, which may, 

 after all, be found to unfold the general plan which was adopted by 

 the Almighty when he called into existence the animated beings to 

 be met with in our world. But to return : Mr. Swainson remarks 

 that there is an evident relationship between the waxwings [Bomby- 

 cillinai), of which three species only have hitherto been discovered, 

 and the well-known family of the swallows. This is seen in the 

 wide gape, the lengthened wings, and the comparative weak feet of 

 the waxwing. On this account, he proposes to call them swallow- 

 chatterers. By this, he at least gets rid of the anomaly, which is 

 caused by the Japanese waxwing {Bombycilla Phcenicoptera) having, 

 in reality, so far as is yet known, no wax-like appendages at all. 



When we wish to know anything of the waxwing, beyond its mere 

 name and its technical description, we must betake ourselves to 

 foreign sources. In the language of science, the bird for many a year 

 has been garrulus or garrula; varied only according to the gender of 

 the word to which it has been attached ; and in our own tongue it 

 has, in like manner, figured for the same period as an incorrigible 

 chatterer. But what is the testimony of those, who have endeavoured 

 in person to make themselves acquainted with its character and man- 

 ners ? " No name," says the Prince of Musignauo,* " could be more 

 inappropriate for these birds than that of chatterers, as there are few 

 less noisy ; and they might even be called mute with much better 

 reason. When taking wing, they utter a note resembling the sylla- 

 bles zi % zi, ri, but are generally silent." (Wilson's ' American Orni- 

 thology,' Sir W. Jardine's edition, vol. iii. pp. 459 and 463). Dr. 

 Richardson, who, in his remote and dreary locality in the Arctic 



* In one particular, this distinguished ornithologist is apparently inconsistent in 

 regard to this beautiful bird. In page 458 of the volume mentioned, he speaks of it 

 as being exclusively fiugivorous, whereas in p. 459 he informs us that in summer it 

 seizes upon insects, catching them dexterously in the same manner as its distant re- 

 latives, the flycatchers ; and, in p. 462, he observes that, during summer, insects con- 

 stitute its principal food. 



