﻿352 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



The rapacious habits of shrikes and crows are well 

 known ; for the latter have been frequently seen to fly 

 off with young ducks and chickens from the poultry 

 yard, and carry them to their nest as food. This analogy 

 is also expressed by the French name of Pie-greche, 

 long since given to the shrikes, and by the corvine 

 shrike (Lmiius corvinus, Shaw) having been classed by 

 Linngean writers, although erroneously, as a crow. 

 When we see blackbirds (Merulidce), and fieldfares 

 (Sturnidce), feeding during the autumn in the same 

 meadow with starlings, both looking after the same 

 kind of food, and both flocks frequently intermixed, 

 who can doubt that one family represents the other ? 

 It will be remembered that the warblers and finches 

 are among the smallest of all birds ; their feet also 

 are more particularly formed for active exercise among 

 trees, while they blend into each other so imperceptibly, 

 that many of the titlarks (Anthus) cannot well be dis- 

 tinguished from true larks. The plantain-eaters (Mu- 

 sophagidce) perfectly resemble the fruit-eaters (Ampe- 

 lidce), in living only upon pulpy vegetables : both have 

 the feet very short, and both are remarkable for their 

 rich colours. The resemblance of the BuceridcB, or 

 hornbills, to the Muscicapidce, or flycatchers, is par- 

 ticularly curious, since we might, at first, be puzzled in 

 discovering how two families, so very opposite in their 

 general aspect, could yet represent each other. The 

 hornbills, of all the conirostral birds, have the most 

 enormous and disproportionate bills ; so, in fact, have 

 the tody flycatchers (Eurylaimus), since the width of 

 their bill is often greater than that of their head : both 

 also have the feet very short, and the two outer toes 

 united together more than half their length. No analogy, 

 in fact, can be more perfect ; for both, by this latter 

 peculiarity, represent the web-footed order of swimming 

 birds (Natatores), and both, like the swallows, have 

 very round nostrils. 



(294.) We shall next compare this tribe with the 

 Scansores, or climbing birds; to which, as they are 



