354 Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 



worth preserving. Outwardly it was constructed of roots 

 interwoven with mosses, but in the lining of the nest, mixed 

 with black and white hairs, were swans-down and thistle- 

 seed, this last evidently made use of on account of its plumed 

 appendages, all of which remained attached to the seed. It 

 was late in the autumn when this nest was observed, so that 

 the period at which the thistle-seed was obtained is unknown. 

 A correspondent remarks, that he has removed nests contain- 

 ing the young to a considerable distance without their being 

 forsaken by the parent birds. My friend at Cromac supplies 

 a note to the effect that he once took all the eggs, three in 

 number, out of a green-linnet's nest and put in their place a 

 similar number of those of the titlark : the next morning he 

 found that a fourth egg had been laid by the green-linnet, 

 which he afterwards saw several times on the nest, but further, 

 the result is unknown to him. 



That green-linnets collect into flocks, and remain so for the 

 winter is well known, and I have so remarked them about 

 Belfast feeding in the highest cultivated fields adjoining the 

 heath of the mountain-top, and again in low-lying tracts some- 

 what distant from any plantation or place where they would 

 roost for the night. In summer likewise they are occasionally 

 congregated. Two excellent observers have noticed them as 

 follows — one, in the vicinity of the town just mentioned, re- 

 marked a flock of not less than thirty, feeding on a moun- 

 tain pasture on the 27th of June; and the other saw them 

 come in numbers at the same season to meadows at the 

 sea- side when ready for cutting, and he conjectured, for the 

 purpose of feeding on the seed of the dandelion [Leontodon 

 Taraxacum), which plant was there very abundant — both 

 localities were near to tilled ground and plantations of trees 

 and shrubs. 



A correspondent mentions, that by placing one of these 

 birds in a cage-trap he has caught numbers. I have known 

 some, when taken young and caged, and after being so kept 

 for some little time, to be given their liberty every morning, 

 when they returned to their cage in the evening to roost as 

 regularly as in a perfectly wild state they would have done to 

 their favourite tree or shrub. 



The only food which I have found in the stomachs of a 

 number of these birds killed during winter was grain and 

 seeds of different kinds. 



The Goldfinch, Fringilla Carduelis, Linn., though 

 found over the four provinces of Ireland, is by no means ge- 

 nerally distributed, and in some extensive districts which seem 

 in every respect most favourably circumstanced for it, is not 



