The Crossbill {Loxia acrvirostra, Z,.) in Irela^id. 31 



into flocks, that Crossbills are most apt to wander about the 

 country or even to migrate. How long they continue to feed 

 their young at large is a curious question. I have seen one 

 take food from another on the 26th February, and Mr. Moffat 

 seems to have seen the same thing in County Wexford on 

 15th January, two Crossbills in a flock having put their beaks 

 together repeatedly. This he interpreted as an act of courtship, 

 but as it was done in a flock, why may it not, like the follow- 

 ing, have been an instance of an old bird still feeding a 3"0ung 

 one of the previous year? Throughout March, 1892, four 

 Crossbills have kept in company about the Giant's Rock. On 

 the 28th I observed the red bird, the old male of this family 

 party, pursued, evidently for food, by another that was full- 

 grown, and not a bird of this year. 



Of the five pairs whose nests we found here, three males 

 were red and two were golden 3^ellow. The male now 

 in the British Museum is one of the latter. Another j'-ellow 

 male was large, active, vigilant, his mandibles conspicuously 

 crossed, and was decidedly the most wary Crossbill I have 

 seen. This inclines me to think that Wheelright was right 

 {Zoologist^ 1862, p. 8001), and that the most mature plumage 

 is yellow. 



The Parrot-Crossbill (var. pifyopsittacus) was not recognised 

 in Ireland until January, 1889 {Zoologist, 1889, p. 181), but 

 during the autumn and v\dnter of 1890-91, all the specimens 

 of Crossbills received by Mr. Williams from different parts of 

 the country, were of that large race {Zoologist, 1891, p, 112). 

 I have never, to my knowledge, met with the Parrot-Crossbill, • 

 but then I have killed none except the two in the British 

 Museum. 



Mr. E. Williams records (Zoologist, 1889, p. 266), under the 

 sub-specific name oiimbidfasciata, Brehm, a variety of Crossbill 

 from Edenderry, in which the tips of the wing-coverts were 

 buff, forming two bars, and he quotes in relation to it the 

 remarks of Professor Newton who had never seen it before. 

 This rare variety is not to be confounded with the White- 

 winged Crossbill {Loxia bifasciatci), a distinct .species. 



COUNTY DUBININ, PAST AND PRESENT. 



BY PROF. GRKNYII^LK A. J. COIvE, F.G.S. 



{Conlimted from page 14.) 



II. — Thf Ordovician Period. 



WherKVKR the shore-line of the sea of Bray and Howth 

 may have been, in early Cambrian or even Precambrian 

 times, by the end of the Cambrian period the marine deposits 



