76 
MAGPIE. 
numbers. The drawing was taken from a very beautiful 
specimen, sent from the Mandan nation, on the Missouri, to 
Mr Jefferson, and by that gentleman presented to Mr Peale 
of this city, in whose museum it lived for several months, and 
where I had an opportunity of examining it. On carefully 
comparing it with the European Magpie in the same collection, 
no material difference could be perceived. The figure on the 
plate is reduced to exactly half the size of life. 
This bird unites in its character courage and cunning, 
turbulency and rapacity. Not inelegantly formed, and distin- 
guished by gay as well as splendid plumage, he has long been 
noted in those countries where he commonly resides, and his 
habits and manners are there familiarly known. He is parti- 
cularly pernicious to plantations of young oaks, tearing up the 
acorns ; and also to birds, destroying great numbers of their 
eggs and young, even young chickens, partridges, grouse, and 
pheasants. It is perhaps on this last account that the wdiole 
vengeance of the game laws has lately been let loose upon 
him in some parts of Britain, as appears by accounts from that 
white feathers on the back. Length of the body, exclusive of the tail, seven 
inches, that of the tail from eleven to twelve inches, that of the common 
being from nine to ten.” 
In the Northern Zoology, Corvus Hudsonicus is quoted as a synonym. The 
authors remark, “ This bird, so common in Europe, is equally plentiful in the 
interior prairie lands of America ; but it is singular, that, though it abounds on 
the shores of Sweden, and other maritime parts of the Old World, it is very 
rare on the Atlantic, eastward of the Mississippi, or Lake Winipeg.” “ The 
manners of the American bird are precisely what we have been accustomed to 
observe in the English one. On comparing its eggs with those of the 
European bird, they were found to be longer and narrower ; and though the 
colours are the same, the blotches are larger and more diffused.” 
The distinctions mentioned by Mr Sabine seem very trivial ; indeed they 
may be confined entirely to a less size. The grayish tuft of feathers on the 
rump is the same in the common Magpie of Britain. I have had an opportu- 
nity of examining only one North American specimen, which is certainly 
smaller, but in no other respect different. The authors of the Northern 
Zoology mention their having compared arctic specimens with one from the 
interior of China, and they found no difference. The geographical distribution 
may therefore extend to a greater range than was supposed, — Europe, China, 
and America. — Ed. 
