146 
GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 
ers. The female lays six eggs, of a pale cinereous colour, thick- 
ly marked at the greater end with spots and streaks of rufous. 
She sits fifteen days. The young are produced early in June, 
sometimes towards the latter end of May; and during the great- 
er part of the first season are of a brown ferruginous colour on 
the back. 
When We compare the beak of this species, with his legs and 
claws, they appear to belong to two very different orders of 
birds; the former approaching, in its conformation, to that of 
the Accipitrine; the latter to those of the Pies; and, indeed, in 
his food and manners he is assimilated to both. For though man 
has arranged and subdivided this numerous class of animals into 
separate tribes and families, yet nature has united these to each 
other by such nice gradations, and so intimately, that it is hard- 
ly possible to determine where one tribe ends, or tbe succeed- 
ing commences. We therefore find several eminent naturalists 
classing this genus of birds with the Accipitrine, others with the 
Pies. Like the former he preys, occasionally, on other birds; 
and like the latter on insects, particularly grasshoppers, which 
I believe to be his principal food; having at almost all times, 
even in winter, found them in his stomach. In the month of 
December, and while the country was deeply covered with 
snow, I shot one of these birds, near the head waters of the Mo- 
hawk river, in the state of New York, the stomach of which 
was entirely filled with large black spiders. He was of a much 
purer white, above, than any I have since met with; though 
evidently of the same species with the present; and I think it 
probable, that the males become lighter coloured as they ad- 
vance in age, till the minute transverse lines of brown on the 
lower parts almost disappear. 
In his manners he has more resemblance to the pies than to 
birds of prey, particularly in the habit of carrying off his sur- 
plus food, as if to hoard it for future exigences; with this dif- 
ference, that Crows, Jays, Magpies, &c. conceal theirs at ran- 
dom, in holes and crevices, where perhaps it is forgotten or 
never again found ; while the Butcher-bird sticks his on thorns 
