2 1 o The I?ish Na turn list. 



Fir in large numbers, and hacks away the exterior bit by bit, 

 so clumsily that one may pick up a dozen on which he has 

 operated without finding one whose seeds he has reached. 

 The Squirrel's mode is to snip off the scales, dropping a de- 

 nuded core to the earth. The Crossbill pursues a method 

 peculiar to himself. The cone which he lets fall, if a Larch 

 cone, is marked simply by two longitudinal gashes cut from 

 near the centre to the edge of each scale. If a Pine-cone, 

 it presents an aspect more illustrative of the bird's mechanical 

 power — the scales being all completely loosened, and hanging 

 disjointedly like the appendages of a rattle. At first sight one 

 would imagine that totally different methods had been em- 

 ployed in extracting the seeds of the two trees. The differ- 

 ence, however, is not in the Crossbill's modus operandi, but in 

 the stage at which the scales of the cone yield to it. Those of 

 the Larch (as might be expected of a tree whose seeds the Gold- 

 finch, Siskin and Lesser Redpole so easily extract) at once 

 suffer the points of the Crossbill's inserted mandibles to pierce 

 their tissue, and thus escape being loosened at the base by 

 main pressure. The toughness of the Pine-scale is the raiso?i 

 d'etre of the Crossbill's peculiar formation, and the same act 

 on the bird's part which rends into ribbons the scale of the 

 Larch merely disturbs and forces upwards that of the 

 Pine. 



On one unimportant particular, I must venture to differ from 

 Mr. Ussher, who states {Irish Nat., vol. i., p. 9) that a Cross- 

 bill commences to work a cone at the apex. I have watched 

 the operation many times, and have invariably found the com- 

 mencement to be at the base of the cone. I have also picked 

 up scores of cones which had been dropped unfinished ; in all 

 these, without exception, the scales of the large end had been 

 lacerated, and those at the small end left entire. 



In September, 1892, I was for some time much puzzled over 

 the voice of a bird I heard singing in the woods by night, at 

 full moon. Eventually it proved to be the Crossbill, to whose 

 " Songs, like legends, strange to hear," 



I thus listened, for the first time, under somewhat unwonted 

 conditions. 



