352 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OP 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 {Lanius corvinus, Shaw) having been classed by 
Linnsean writers, altbough erroneously, as a crow. 
When we see blackbirds (Merulidce), and fieldfares 
(Sturnidfp), 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 w'arblers and finches 
are among the smallest of ail 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 {Mii- 
sophagidte) perfectly resemble the fruit-eaters {Ampe- 
Uda), in living only upon pulpy vegetables : both have 
the feet very short, and both are remarkable for their 
rich colours. The resemblance of the Bucerida, or 
hornbills, to the Aluscimpidte, 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 (^Euryl(iimus'), since the ividth 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 tlie 
Scansores, or climbing birds ; to which, as tltey are 
