MAGPIE. 
75 
a strong glow of ferruginous ; secondaries, pale brown, indis- 
tinctly barred with darker ; primaries, brownish orange, spotted 
with black, wholly black at the tips ; tail, long, slightly 
rounded, barred alternately with dark and pale brown ; inner 
vanes, white ; exterior feathers, brownish orange ; wings, when 
closed, reach rather beyond the middle of the tail ; tail-coverts, 
white, marked with heart-shaped spots of brown, breast and 
belly, white, with numerous long drops of brown, the shafts 
blackish ; femoral feathers, large, pale yellow ochre, marked 
with numerous minute streaks of pale brown ; claws, black. 
The legs of this bird are represented by different authors as 
slender ; but I saw no appearance of this in those I examined. 
The female is considerably darker above, and about two 
inches longer. 
MAGPIE. — CORVUS PICA. — Plate XXXV. Fig. 2. 
Arct. Zool. No. 136. — Lath. i. 392. — Buff. iii. 85. — Beale's Museum , No. 1333. 
PICA CAUDATA. — Ray.* 
This bird is much better known in Europe than in this 
country, where it has not been long discovered ; although it 
is now found to inhabit a wide extent of territory, and in great 
* The common Magpie of Europe is typical of that section among the 
Corvidce, to which the name of Pica has been given. They retain the form 
of the bill as in Corvus ; their whole members are weaker ; the feathers on the 
rump are more lax and puffy, and the tail is always very lengthened. 
The Appendix to Captain Franklin’s narrative, by Mr Sabine, first gave 
rise to the suspicion, that two very nearly allied species of Magpie were found 
in the northern parts of America ; and that gentleman has accordingly described 
the specimens killed at Cumberland House, during the first arctic expedition, 
under the name of Corvus Hudsonicus — of which the following are the principal 
distinctions — and he seems to consider that bird more particularly confined to 
the more northern parts of the continent, while the other was met with in the 
United States and the Missouri country : 
“ The Hudson’s Bay Magpie is of less size in all its parts than the common 
Magpie, except in its tail, which exceeds that of its congener in length ; but 
the most remarkable and obvious difference is, in a loose tuft of grayish and 
