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female. The lower parts are of a lighter grey, and the bars which cross the breast
and belly finer and much paler, becoming nearly obsolete towards the vent. The
bill is darker. The specimen is injured, so that its length cannot be exactly ascertained,
but it appears to be shorter than the female. The tail is certainly a quarter
of an inch shorter; but the dimensions of the bill and tarsi correspond with that
specimen. It differs from the bird described in the following article in its greater
size, less cuneiform tail, white frontlet, paler bill, and barred breast; but the
general resemblance between the two is very great. R.
[29.] 2. L a n i u s e x c u b i t o r i d e s . (Swainson.) American Grey Shrike.
F a m il y . Laniadae. Sub-family. Lanianae. Sw ain so n .
Ch . Sp . L a n iu s e x c u b it o r id e s pulchre plumbeus subter albus immaculatus, vostro lineaque frontali transversd et
fa s c ia capitis laterali nigris, alia brevibus, c a u d a gradli elongato-cuneata nigra albo lateraliter cincta.
Sp . Ch . A m e r ic a n G r e y S h r i k e , deep pearl-grey; beneath, white, without markings; bill, the narrow frontal
line, and a band passing over the eye and cheek, black; wings short.; tail narrow, very cuneiform, black,
with a white lateral border.
P l a t e x x x iv .
This is a more southern bird than the preceding species. It does not advance
farther north in the summer than the fifty-fourth degree of latitude ; and it attains
that parallel only in the meridian of the warm and sandy plains of the Saskatchewan,
which enjoy an earlier spring and longer summer than the densely
wooded country lying betwixt them and Hudson’s Bay. Its manners, as observed
in the neighbourhood of Carlton House, were precisely similar to those of the preceding
species, feeding chiefly on the grasshoppers, which are exceedingly numerous
in the plains. Mr. Drummond found its nest, in the beginning of June, in a
bush of willows; it was built of twigs of artemisiw and dried grass, and lined with
feathers. Its eggs, six in number, resembled those of the Magpie, being of a
very pale yellowish-grey colour, with many irregular and confluent spots of oil-
green, interspersed with a few of smoke-grey.—R.
The examination of this bird has been attended with no ordinary trouble. That
a species, by no means rare in the northern parts of America, should now for the
first time be considered new, may well excite both surprise and scepticism. But
as our opinion is founded upon the statements of others, whose accuracy in the