And indeed it was handsome, worthy to be called the "Sultana;" with the most exquisite iridescent bluish-purple plumage, the legs yellow, or greenish-yellow (a point by which it may be distinguished from the Florida gallinule, as the bird flies from you), the bill red tipped with pale green, and the shield (on the forehead, like a continuation of the upper mandible) light blue, of a peculiar shade, "just as if it had been painted."

The lateral processes, which may be taken to represent the perfect avicularia of the other species, are, as far as can be ascertained from specimens that have been dried, without a movable mandible, and are probably really so, because there is no corresponding beak.

The great swimmers, supplied with formidable mandibles and immense and elastic stomachs, prefer the fortunes of war, the pursuit of living prey, and devour,as the carnivorous devour the herbivorous on land,all the little feeders on débris and plancton.

The first of these which came under my notice was an enormous black parrot (Microglossus aterrimus) with crimson cheeks; at Cape York it feeds upon the cabbage of various palms, stripping down the sheath at the base of the leaves with its powerful, acutely-hooked upper mandible.

At last, by way of reply, it uttered a few shrill and prolonged cries, accompanied by the rattling of its two horny mandibles.

This false bait attracts the unwary ones and soon the cavernous mandibles close upon them.

This singular insect has an affinity to Sagra, but differs from that genus in having setiform antennae, porrect mandibles, and securiform palpi.

At that, the bo'sun drew us off, though the man who had attacked the crab desired to make an end of it, averring that we should get some very good eating out of it; but to this the bo'sun would not listen, telling him that it was yet capable of very deadly mischief, did any but come within reach of its prodigious mandible.

The lower jaw should be as strong And changeless as a granite cliff; Its very look should be a thus And not a maybe, somehow, if; Should mark a soul so resolute It will not fear or cease or lag We need a rugged mandible, Provided we don't let it wag.

"Ah!" he repeated, to himself, and even repeated to Mrs. Weldon, who hardly listened to him, "this is the country of the manticores, those coleopteres with long hairy feet, with welded and sharp wing-shells, with enormous mandibles, of which the most remarkable is the tuberculous manticore.