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Updated: May 31, 2025
The genus Furnarius contains several species, all small birds, living on the ground, and inhabiting open dry countries. In structure they cannot be compared to any European form. Ornithologists have generally included them among the creepers, although opposed to that family in every habit. The best known species is the common oven-bird of La Plata, the Casara or housemaker of the Spaniards.
Vireo philadelphicus is in a peculiar case: it looks like one common bird, and sings like another. It might have been invented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has been supposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly geologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the notice of the older ornithologists.
For the sake of a strong contrast, we may look next at the brown thrush, known to farmers as the planting-bird and to ornithologists as Harporhynchus rufus; a staid and solemn Puritan, whose creed is the Preacher's, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." No frivolity and merry-making for him!
Of this latter family there are said to be sixty different varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing.
Yet, even apart from this wholly agreeable memory, I find nothing unpleasant in their music, and can readily conceive that the moping owl may sing to his mate as passionately as Philomel. Not only is there the popular lack of distinction between one owl and another already referred to, but scientific ornithologists have displayed similar want of finality in classifying these birds.
Whilst on the subject of Cuckoos I may mention, for the information of such of my Guernsey readers who are not ornithologists, and therefore not well acquainted with the fact, the peculiar state of plumage in which the female Cuckoo occasionally returns northward in her second summer; I mean the dull reddish plumage barred with brown, extremely like that of the female Kestrel: in this plumage she occasionally returns in her second year and breeds; but when this is changed for the more general plumage I am unable to state for certain, but probably after the second autumnal moult.
But that would be only giving one more proof of our heartlessness; and, besides, unless a man is downright angry he can scarcely feel that he has really cleared himself when he has done nothing more than to point the finger and say, You're another. However, I am not set for the defence of ornithologists. They are abundantly able to take care of themselves without the help of any outsider.
On the supposition of its being only a variety, he observes, "The case is the most remarkable ever recorded of the abrupt appearance of a new form, which so closely resembles a true species, that it has deceived one of the most experienced of living ornithologists." As to plants, M. C. Naudin has given the following instances of the sudden origination of apparently permanent forms.
And oddly enough this bird has been known to the natives as a "goose" since the discovery of America, and now after three centuries our scientific ornithologists have made the discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan.
But the people of Chrystie street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting by the window, and said: "Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too tired?" The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window answered, with a frown. "Checkers. No, I won't.
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