﻿38 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



open and shut his fine yillow crest, when merely occu- 

 pied in watching for insects. This fact, joined with the 

 considerations already mentioned, has more than once 

 suggested to us the idea that these 

 flower-like ornaments are occa- 

 sionally used as snares, to attract 

 the attention of insects, so as to 

 bring them within reach of being 

 captured by a sudden dart. This, 

 at least, we know, — that insects 

 are attracted by the bright colours 

 of flowers, and turn out of their 

 course to visit them. It is, there- 

 fore, not too much to suppose 

 that, seeing what, at a little dis- 

 tance, appears to them a bright yellow flower, they 

 should fly towards it, discovering their mistake only 

 when they are within the range of the sudden swoop 

 of their treacherous enemy. It by no means follows 

 that this is the habit of all flycatchers ; for in pro- 

 portion to the variety in the different races of insects, so 

 are the birds which feed upon them endowed with dif- 

 ferent instincts, and pursue different modes in their 

 capture. Be this hypothesis, however, true or false, the 

 facts upon which it is founded are beyond cavil, and we 

 must leave those who are not disposed to admit the infer- 

 ences we draw from them, to discover some more plausible 

 mode of accounting for the facts we have stated. 



(46.) The only native birds which possess a crest in 

 any way analogous to those of the tyrants, are the gold 

 crests, the pre-eminent types of the whole family of 

 SylviadcB, or warblers. The crests, however, of these 

 little creatures cannot be strictly termed concealed, for 

 this ornament is conspicuous, even when the feathers 

 lie flat upon the head ; it is, in fact, a union of this form 

 and of the first we noticed. Several of the North 

 American warblers, forming the genus Sylvicola, have 

 what may be called incipient crests of this sort, indi- 

 cated by a stripe of bright yellow down the middle. If 



