158 An Ornithological Letter from Mentone. 
Oct. 12, when paying a first visit to the Jardin des Plantes, 
after I had partially swallowed the disappointment and wonder¬ 
ment caused me by the vast attention paid to cocks and hens and 
les Canards d’Aylesbury, my step was arrested in front of a cage 
tenanted by a white variety of the Common Jay ( Garrulus glan- 
darius ), the bird being entirely white as to plumage, having 
dark eyes, while its beak, tarsi, and feet were flesh-colour. On 
seeing this bird, I instantly recollected a pair of White Starlings 
(variety of Sturnus vulgaris ) which I had the opportunity of 
seeing in a cage last summer. They had been taken near 
Swansea, in a pigeon-house, one hole of which the parent birds 
had usurped, and there tended these, their offspring, in company 
with two others of the ordinary dusky hue. Now, these White 
Starlings were likewise entirely white, having dark eyes, with 
beak, tarsi, and feet flesh-colour. Is it fair to attempt to draw 
the inference from the two cases that the tendency to become 
albino among birds is expressed rather by the pinkish colour 
of the extremities than of the eyes ? 
From Paris we gained the south without making any note 
worth reporting, the birds being even fewer than usual because 
of the absence of the Royston Crow ( Corvus cornix ), which was 
not then in France. When toiling over the Turbith Mountain, 
lying between Nice and Mentone, I saw the handsome Black 
Wheatear flitting from place to place among the rugged torrents 
of stone that lie in the hollows of the mountain, his black dress 
relieved by his white tail and tail-coverts. His sprightly manners 
and his love for the highest point of the highest stone reminded 
me strongly of our own Saxicola oenanthe, which he also resembled 
in size. I am quite unable to say whether I should call him 
Saxicola cachinnans or S. stapazina , as the males of both of these 
species are at this season remarkably alike in colouring. After 
this, we had not gone far before Mentone appeared in view— 
a compact town gathered on a promontory which, running a short 
way into the sea, suffices to divide the main bay into eastern and 
western bays, while a grand amphitheatre of rocky mountains 
protects from the northerly winds the entire sweep, as the range 
rises for the most part from the sea-level. The slopes nearest 
the sea are devoted to lemons, oranges, olives; and as these trees 
