78 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



many recruits, goldfinches (Carduelis elegans), 

 grey linnets (Linota cannabina), and green gros- 

 beaks (Coccothraustes chloris), pass in consider- 

 able numbers; and such multitudes of the first- 

 named species are occasionally taken,* that the 

 market of the song-bird dealers is literally glutted 

 with them, even their most capacious family-cages 

 being quite filled with recently- captured gold- 

 finches; and from this circumstance, as well as 

 from the comparatively trifling value attached to 

 these birds at this season — when, from the imma- 

 turity of the greater proportion of the little pri- 

 soners, and the deficient state of their plumage, 

 the sex cannot be satisfactorily ascertained — they 

 are frequently doomed to death, and being after- 

 wards tied up with yellow wagtails, green gros- 

 beaks and grey linnets, in variegated bundles, 

 from which their own little crimson heads pro- 

 trude like ripe berries, they are hawked about 

 by the juvenile members of the bird-catching 

 fraternity, and occasionally sold to those who 



* May not this account in some degree for the total 

 disappearance of the goldfinch from certain inland coun- 

 ties during the winter months'? Herefordshire, for 

 example; a fact to which the editor of the "Zoolo- 

 gist " has directed the attention of his correspondents. 

 "Zoologist," vol. iii., p. 984. 



