Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

species: the particulars of these labours here, therefore, would but little amuse or edify the general reader, for after all he would be obliged to confess that much uncertainty still prevails on the subject.

The owls are, in fact, very distinct from the diurnal rapacious birds. The former have obtuse sight, while the latter enjoy that sense to an exquisite degree of perfection. The owls have feathers immediately at the base of the bill, with the upper mandible in some degree moveable, as in the parrots; one of their anterior toes also is capable of being turned behind, and their flight is in general heavy and silent; while the diurnal acciptres, in general, have a denuded fleshy ridge at the base of the bill, with the upper mandible perfectly fixed, all the toes fixed, and a rapid, elevated, and noisy flight. In fact, there seems little else common to these divisions of the birds of prey than their carnivorous appetite, and consequent predacious habit.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]

3. Great Harpy.

Vip.36.4,Java Honey Buzzant,

Vip.44. 5. Laughing Falcom,

Vi.p.60.

Vi.p. 52.

Vi.p. 42. 6, White Striped Swallow Shrike. Ocyp.

[merged small][ocr errors]

THE SECOND ORDER OF THE BIRDS,

OR

THE PASSERES,

Is the most numerous of the entire class. Its character appears at first purely negative, for it embraces all the birds which are neither swimmers, nor waders, nor climbers, nor rapacious, nor gallinaceous. Nevertheless, on a close comparison, we soon discover between the birds of this order a great resemblance of structure, and gradations so insensible from one genus to another, that subdivisions become difficult of establishment.

The Passeres have neither the violent character of the birds of prey, nor the fixed regimen of the gallinacea, or of the water-fowl. Their aliment consists in insects, fruits, and grains. It is more exclusively granivorous in proportion to the thickness of their bill, and more exclusively insectivorous, as the latter is more attenuated. Some, which possess a tolerably strong bill, are even found to pursue small birds *.

Their stomach is in the form of a muscular gizzard, and they have, in general, two very small cæcums. Among them we find the singing birds, and the most complicated conformations of the lower larynx.

* I have been unable to find, externally or internally, any proper character of separation between the passeres and the genera comprehended in the pice of Linnæus, which are not climbers.

The proportional length of their wings, and the extent of their flight, are as variable as their mode of life.

Their sternum has usually but one slope on each side at its lower edge. There are, however, two in the rollers, the king-fishers, and the bee-eaters, and none in the martinets and the colibris.

Our first division shall be founded on the character of the feet, and our subsequent ones on the beak.

The first and most numerous division comprehends the genera in which the external toe is united to the internal, only by one or two phalanges.

The first family of this division is that of the

DENTIROSTRES,

Whose beak is sloped on the sides of the point. In this family are found the greatest number of insectivorous birds. Still, they almost all of them also eat berries, and other tender fruits.

The genera are determined by the general form of the beak. It is strong and compressed in the shrikes, and in the thrushes; depressed in the fly-eaters; round and thick in the tanagers, slender and pointed in the fine-beaks, &c.

THE SHRIKES (LANIUS, Linn.) PIE-GRIECHES, Cuv. Have the beak conical or compressed, more or less

crooked at the end..

THE SHRIKES properly so called, (PIE-Grieches,) Have it triangular at the base, compressed at the

« НазадПродовжити »