New Holland (Vanga destructor, Temm.), after strangling a mouse, or crushing its skull, double it through the wires of its cage, and with every demonstration of savage triumph proceed to tear it limb from limb, and devour it.[1] Mr. Swainson, alluding to the rapacity and power of the Laniadæ, remarks that the comparisons frequently drawn between them and the Falconidæ, are no less true in fact, than beautiful in analogy; for that many of the latter sit on a tree for hours, watching for such little birds as may come within reach of a sudden swoop, when pouncing on the quarry, they seize it in their talons, bear it to their roost, and devour it piecemeal. These, he adds, are precisely the manners of the true Shrike; yet, with all this, the structure of the Falcons and Shrikes, and their more intimate relations are so different, that these birds cannot be classed in the same Order, though they illustrate that system of symbolic relationship termed analogy, which Mr. Swainson believes to pervade creation; yet the two groups are in no wise connected, and there is, in consequence, no affinity between them.
In addition to what we have said of the characters which the beak presents in this Family, we may add that the claws, as instruments of capture, are peculiarly fine and sharp in the typical species, and this character pervades, more or less, the whole Family. In general, also, the tail-coverts have a tendency to be puffed out into a soft and loose protuberance on the lower part of the back; in some, however, the shafts of these feathers are stiff and prolonged.
- ↑ Pict. Mus. i. 303.
