can hardly yet be drawn, and the elder Yon Nordmann says
he has seen in the Crimea individuals intermediate between
the two. The common Jay, however, inhabits the forest-
districts to the West of the Black Sea to Constantinople,
and thence throughout Epirus and Greece. Col. Drum-
mond-Hay found it breeding in Crete. It inhabits nearly
all suitable districts throughout the European Continent,
and most of its islands*, as Sicily and Sardinia, but in the
south of Spain, as at Gibraltar, it is only a winter-visitant,
and it does not appear to cross the Mediterranean to Africa f
—Malta even being outside its range—and its place in
Algeria is taken by the very distinct G. cervicalis.
The beak is blackish horn-colour: the irides very pale
blue : on each side of the gape there is a black patch an
inch long; face, forehead and crown dull-white tinged with
buff, each feather tipped with black, which, as the feathers become
elongated, takes the form of a median stripe, until behind
the line of the eyes these stripes pass into purplish-cinnamon
curiously barred with a distinct shade of the same colour;
the nape, scapulars and back, cinnamon; wing-coverts
barred with very pale blue, deepening into bright cobalt-blue
and then into black, across the exposed part of the web,
the hidden part being nearly uniform black; primaries dusky
black, externally edged with dull white; secondaries velvet
black, each with a well-defined white patch, often tinged
with blue, on the basal half of the outer web; outer tertials
velvet-black, indistinctly barred with blue and black at the
base of the outer web; inmost tertials rich chestnut; rump
and upper tail-coverts pure white; tail-feathers blackish-
brown, indistinctly barred with pale blue at the base; chin
and throat dull white; breast and belly pale cinnamon
deepening in colour on the flanks; vent and lower tail-
coverts dull white ; wings and tail-feathers beneath smoke-
grey : legs, toes and claws, pale brown.
The whole length varies from thirteen inches and three-
* Mr. Cecil Smith excludes it from his recent ‘ Birds of Guernsey
f Unless, indeed, the O. minor described from Algeria by J. P. Verreaux he,
as Mr. Dresser states, the young of G. glandarius.
quarters to fourteen inches and a half or even more. From
the carpal joint to the end of the wing, seven inches and an
eighth ; the first primary about two inches and a half long;
the second about four inches and an half, and nearly an
inch shorter than the th ird ; the fourth, fifth and sixth
nearly equal, but the fifth longest.
There is little difference in the plumage of the sexes, and
the young also resemble the adults, but have brown irides.
The expediency of dividing the Linnaeus genus Corvus
has long been recognized and the genera here adopted are
accepted by nearly all modern systematists. The Editor is
inclined to regard the Corvidce as the most highly-organized
family of the Order Passeres—themselves the highest type
of Bird-structure. In most of the genera of this family,
the first plumage of the young resembles that of the adult,
the occasional exceptions found in the Book being perhaps
explicable on the hypothesis before suggested {supra page
303); but in that view the genus next to be described must
be deemed less developed and differentiated, retaining as do
most of its members that unmistakable mark of youth—a
spotted plumage—to the end of their life.