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which it is attached in a slightly different fashion, and 
thus ensuring variability of sound, exists in the Passerines 
than in any other birds. The birds that come nearest 
to them are the parrots, with whose powers of varied 
utterance every one is familiar. It is curious that per- 
fection of voice organ does not go hand in hand with 
variability of voice. The hoarse crow and the melodious 
nightingale have a practically identical syrinx. But 
then, after all, the voice of the prima donna is more 
flexible and varied than that of the itinerant vendor of 
cat’s meat, though both have a voice-producing organ 
of identical structure. Externally the Passerinea are to 
be detected by the four toes, of which the hind toe is 
very prominent and turned backwards, and by the 
fewness of the scales upon the legs. With this much by 
‘way of a preface we shall consider a typical Passerine 
bird, the cow bird, or more correctly the cow-pen bird, 
so called on account of its fondness for visiting cow-pens. 
This bird, known to science as Molothrus (or, more 
correctly, as it appears, Molobrus, the former name 
having been originally a misprint) bonariensis, is black 
in hue throughout, and is naturally also called the 
blackbird. It is of about the same size as the blackbird 
of this country, and is like it, a typical Passerine, with 
the same voice organ and structure in general. It is, 
indeed, the habits and not the structure of this bird 
which are so interesting and unexpected. Every one 
knows of the parasitic way of life of the immoral cuckoo, 
who entrusts to strangers the rearing of its young, and 
who, besides thus evading the duties as well as the 
pleasure of maternity and paternity, is, when young 
and in the foreign nest, a bloodthirsty tyrant to its 
fellow nestlings ; these, the rightful owners of the nest, 
it turns out and leaves to die upon the hard ground 
beneath. This very same habit is inherent in the 
Molothrus bonariensis, and in some of the other species 
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