76 MAGPIE. 



throat, dark brown, streaked with white ; lesser coverts with 

 a strong glow of ferruginous ; secondaries, pale brown, indis- 

 tinctly barred with darker ; primaries, brownish orange, 

 spotted with black, wholly black at the tips ; tail long, 

 slightly rounded, barred alternately with dark and pale 

 brown ; inner vanes, white ; exterior feathers, brownish 

 orange ; wings, when closed, reach rather beyond the middle 

 of the tail ; tail-coverts, white, marked with heart-shaped 

 spots of brown ; breast and belly, white, with numerous long 

 drops of brown, the shafts blackish ; femoral feathers, large, 

 pale yellow ochre, marked with numerous minute streaks of 

 pale brown ; claws, black. The legs of this bird are repre- 

 sented by different authors as slender ; but I saw no appear- 

 ance of this in those I examined. 



The female is considerably darker above, and about two 

 inches longer. 



MAGPIE. (Corvus pica.) 



PLATE XXXV.— Fig. 2. 



A ret. Zool. Xo. 130.— Lath. i. 392.— Buff. iii. 85.— Peak's Museum, No. 1333. 

 PICA CAUDATA.—R&x.* 



This bird is much better known in Europe than in this 

 country, where it has not been long discovered; although it 

 is now found to inhabit a wide extent of territory, and in 



* The common magpie of Europe is typical of that section among the 

 Corvidce, to which the name of Pica has been given. They retain the 

 form of the bill as in Corvus; their whole members are weaker; the 

 feathers on the rump are more lax and puffy, and the tail is always very 

 lengthened. 



The Appendix to Captain Franklin's narrative, by Mr Sabine, first 

 gave rise to the suspicion that two very nearly allied species of magpie were 

 found in the northern parts of America ; and that gentleman has accord- 

 ingly described the specimens killed at Cumberland House, during the 

 first Arctic expedition, under the name of Corvus Hudsonicus — of which 

 the following are the principal distinctions— and he seeni3 to consider 

 that bird more particularly confined to the more northern parts of the 



