Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/137

124 character, never, however, prolonged to anything like a continuous song.

According to Mr. Hewitson, the Shrike builds its nest in thick bushes and high hedges; it is composed of umbelliferous plants, roots, moss, and wool, lined with finer roots and dried grasses. The eggs are from five to seven in number, of a bluish white, spotted and blotched with brown or purplish grey.

This also is an immense assemblage of species, only less numerous than the last, comprising, like it, birds of much diversity of size, form, structure, and habit. Naturalists consider the Conirostres as displaying the highest degree of organization in all their parts collectively, and consequently this Tribe is typical not only in the Passerine Order, but in the whole Class of Birds. The principal character by which they are associated is, that the beak, though varying greatly in shape and comparative size, is yet for the most part short, but thick, and very strong, more or less conical in form, and in general destitute of any notch at the tip. In one extensive tropical group, however, that of the gaily coloured Tanagers of America, the beak, though decidedly of conirostral form, is distinctly notched, and this probably constitutes one link of connexion between this tribe and the preceding. The feet are,