250 7hc Insh Nairn alist. December. 



perforniaiice must be considered instinctive. In most text-books the 

 mimetic powers of the Ja)' are referred to as a sort of " accomplishment " 

 tliat is carried to its chief perfection in captivity. It seems time that 

 this view of the character of so well-known a gift should be dispelled. 



The chapter on the P^iuches is not divided, like that on the Crows, 

 into sub-chapters dealing with the different species, but follows a line 

 of treatment which, no doubt, facilitates discursive writing on evolu- 

 tionar}- and other topics requiring the survey of a comparatively wide 

 field. Mr. Edmund Selous is so well known as an ardent advocate of 

 the doctrine of sexual selection that it is unnecessar}- here to do more 

 than refer to the view^s he expresses on that point, though the opinions 

 of the unconverted are certainly shown through a somewhat distorted 

 medium. But in touching on the interesting question of the develop- 

 ment of the Crossbill, Mr. Selous seems to have fallen into faulty 

 arguments through a cause which we should not have expected in so 

 pre-eminent a bird watcher— z.t'., defective knowledge of the feeding 

 habits of British finches in general. 



Writing of the large form known as the Parrot Crossbill. Mr. Selous 

 says " it is perfectl}- evident that in this bird we see the final or rather 

 iip-to-date result of certain individuals of the common kind having 

 come to eat the seeds of the Scotch P'ir as well as, and so gradually 

 instead of, those of the larch and spruce, w^hich form the staple of the 

 latter. As more strength was needed to extract these, a stouter bill and 

 larger body were gradually acquired by those birds which delighted to 

 do so, till insensibly, and almost without knowing it, they found them- 

 selves Parrot Crossbills." 



Here it is assumed that the earliest Crossbills did not feed on seeds so 

 difficult to extract from their cones as those of the Scotch Fir. but 

 were of a weak-billed form, and contented themselves with the less 

 perfectly protected seeds of such trees as the spruce and larch. But if 

 this had been the case, the acquisition of the peculiarly formed man- 

 dibles of the Crossbill would be quite inexplicable, since most, if not all, 

 of our finches, are as well able as the Crossbill itself to extract the seeds 

 of the spruce and larch, 



Mr. Selous is unaware of this fact, and he remarks that the Green- 

 finch is probably the only British finch which, besides the Crossbill, 

 possesses, even in a qualified degree the power of extracting the seeds of 

 conifers. He gives a pleasant description of the operation in which he 

 has seen the Greenfinch engaged w^hen attacking the " cones of some 

 introduced trees of this family, the superior size of which may make it 

 easier for him to pick out their seeds " But if he would pay a little more 

 attention to the feeding habits of some of our smaller finches — notably 

 the Lesser Redpoll, vSiskin and Goldfinch — he would probabh- not be 

 long in learning that the habit of shelling larch-cones and even spruce- 

 cones is by no means limited to the strongest-billed members of the 

 family. 



The Lesser Redpoll makes the larch, next to the alder, his favourite 

 feeding-tree in the winter naonths in south-eastern Ireland. Parties 



