LANIAD^E. 115 



female. The lower parts are of a lighter grey, and the bars which cross the breast 

 and belly finer and much paler, becoming nearly obsolete towards the vent. The 

 bill is darker. The specimen is injured, so that its length cannot be exactly ascer- 

 tained, but it appears to be shorter than the female. The tail is certainly a quarter 

 of an inch shorter ; but the dimensions of the bill and tarsi correspond with that 

 specimen. It differs from the bird described in the following article in its greater 

 size, less cuneiform tail, white frontlet, paler bill, and barred breast ; but the 

 general resemblance between the two is very great. — R. 



[29.] 2. Lanius excubitorides. (Swainson.) American Grey Shrike. 



Family. Laniadse. Sub-family. Lanianae. Swainson. 



Ch. Sp. Lanius excubitorides pulchre plumbeus subter albus immaculatus, rostro lineaque frontali transversa, et 

 fascia capitis laterali nigris, alls brevibus, caudd gracili elongato-cuneatd nigra albo lateraliter cincta. 



Sp. Ch. American Grey Shrike, deep pearl-grey ; beneath white, without markings; bill, the narrow frontal 

 line, and a band passing over the eye and cheek, black ; wings short ; tail narrow, very cuneiform, black, 

 with a white lateral border. 



Plate xxxiv. 



This is a more southern bird than the preceding species. It does not advance 

 farther north in the summer than the fifty-fourth degree of latitude ; and it attains 

 that parallel only in the meridian of the warm and sandy plains of the Saskat- 

 chewan, which enjoy an earlier spring and longer summer than the densely 

 wooded country lying betwixt them and Hudson's Bay. Its manners, as observed 

 in the neighbourhood of Carlton House, were precisely similar to those of the pre- 

 ceding species, feeding chiefly on the grasshoppers, which are exceedingly nume- 

 rous in the plains. Mr. Drummond found its nest, in the beginning of June, in a 

 bush of willows ; it was built of twigs of artemisice and dried grass, and lined with 

 feathers. Its eggs, six in number, resembled those of the Magpie, being of a 

 very pale yellowish- grey colour, with many irregular and confluent spots of oil- 

 green, interspersed with a few of smoke-grey. — R. 



The examination of this bird has been attended with no ordinary trouble. That 

 a species, by no means rare in the northern parts of America, should now for the 

 first time be considered new, may well excite both surprise and scepticism. But 

 as our opinion is founded upon the statements of others, whose accuracy in the 



Q 2 



