A history of British birds. By the Rev. F.O. Morris (1862) (14564915648)

Identifier: historyofbritish02morr (find matches)
Title: A history of British birds. By the Rev. F.O. Morris ..
Year: 1862 (1860s)
Authors: Morris, F. O. (Francis Orpen), 1810-1893
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: London, Groombridge and Sons
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries



Text Appearing Before Image:
ander Hepburn, Esq., in the Zoologist, ofthe Jackdaw having built on the branches of trees. The eggs, from four to six in number, are pale bluish white,spotted with grey and brown. The yomig are hatched theend of May. 48 JA.CKDA.W. Male; weight, aboiit nine ounces; length, about one foottwo inches; bill, black, covered at the base with depressedfeathers; iiis, greyish white; crown, black; neck on the back,and nape, fine hoary grey; the whole of the rest of theplumage is black. The first wing feather is two inches anda half shorter than the second, which is three quarters of aninch shorter than the thiid, the third and fourth nearly equalin length, and the longest in the wing. Legs, toes, andclaws, bright black. The female is less than the male; the grey on the neck isless conspicuous, being not so light as in the male, and lessin extent. Young birds have but little of the grey at first;it increases with their age, unlike the Prisoner of Chillon,whose hair was grey, but not with years.
Text Appearing After Image:
MAGPIE. 49 MAGPIE. COMMON MAGPIE. PIANET. MADGE. Pica caicdata, Fleming. Sklbv. Gould. Corvus Pica, Pennant. Montagu. Pica—A Pie—A Magpie. Cauduta—Tailed, (a factitious word.) If I remember aright, in the great French Revokition, thezeal of the people ibr liberie was so great, that they openedthe doors of all the cages, and let the birds fly out. 1 shouldhave enjoyed the sight; though some of the captives perhapspreferred remaining where they were, and did not value theunwonted freedom which they had never known the possessionof, even as the poor prisoner who returned to the dungeon,with whose walls he had become familiar. To him the worldwas become the prison, the spider a more agreeable companionthan his fellow-man: certainly he had found the one morefriendly than the other. Nothing is to me more miserablethan to see a bird in a cage, and, with reference to the speciesbefore us, who can tell what a Magpie is, either in characteror in beauty, from only seeing him thus conlijied