COCCOTHRAUSTES. GROSBEAK. 355 



the Cehlepyrlnm^ the Oriolinw^ &c., arc striking instances. 

 The yellow and black plumage of the present species imme- 

 diately reminds us of an Oriole, an Icterus, and a Goldfinch; 

 which are unquestionably Tenuirostral tj^es : it is, therefore, 

 highly probable that this form possesses the same relation. 

 There is a concealed, but a very singular analogy between our 

 European Coccothraustes and the B omhy cilia gar rula ; and this 

 latter also forms part of a group — the Amjyelidce^ which like- 

 wise represents the Tenuirostres.''^ The Grosbeak has an 

 excessively strong bill, but because its lower mandible is 

 somewhat smaller than the upper, it is analogous to the 

 Tenuirostres, or slender-billed birds ! But, even allowing the 

 reasoning to be correct, the fact on which it is founded, 

 namely, the relative smallness of the lower mandible, is not 

 so. Mr. Swainson certainly has never examined the lower 

 mandible of the Hawfinch, or even of the Greenfinch, for it 

 is larger and broader than the upper, is enormously thick in 

 its walls, and is apt to excite the surprise of a person look- 

 ing at it for the twentieth time, so very unusually strong is it, 

 — so strong that it enables these birds to crack the hardest ker- 

 nels as easily as a Goldfinch shells a grain of hemp seed. The 

 bill altogether is prodigiously strong ; and therefore, to talk 

 of holding it as analogous to that of a Tenuirostral bird, is not 

 commendable. Not to insist longer upon this manifest ab- 

 surdity, let us consider the Genus Coccothraustes as pre- 

 senting in the form of its bill a most powerful instrument for 

 extracting from the hardest and thickest endocarps the seeds 

 which afford it nourishment. Only one species occurs in Bri- 

 tain, the Hawfinch, or Haw Grosbeak, Coccothraustes atro- 

 gularis. Several writers have associated with it the Greenfinch, 

 Fringilla Clitoris of authors, but the bill of that bird is not 

 nearly large enough to entitle it to rank with the Hawfinch, 

 the difference being much greater between the bills of these 

 birds, than between those of the Siskin and Twite. 



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