Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/99

86 porters and chairmen, carrying luggage, nearly came in contact with the cage, which was hung at the foot of the staircase;—yet even here did this bird sing as mellow, as sweet, and as sprightly as did those of Geneva. We have often stopped to hear it, and listened with the greatest pleasure, and as the pieman passed with his jingling bell, a sound now seldom heard in the streets of Edinburgh, the bird seemed more sprightly, and warbled with renewed spirit and energy."

The great extent of the Family Sylviadæ induces us to illustrate it by another form, the habits of which differ much in detail from those of the more typical Warblers. The Wagtails have been briefly but graphically described as "an active graceful race, tripping it along the smooth-shaven grass-plots, edges of ponds, and sandy river-shores in unwearied search for their insect food, and with tails which never cease to vibrate as long as their restless little bodies are in action.

The genus Motacilla, as now restricted to the Wagtails, is characterized by the beak being slender, nearly straight, slightly entering among the feathers of the forehead; the gape smooth; the wings with the first and second quills longest, the tertiary feathers greatly lengthened, extending nearly to the tip of the closed wing, a peculiarity of such birds, of various Orders, as haunt the borders of shallow water; the legs and feet long, particularly the tarsi; the tail very long, and incessantly in