6g RICE BUNTING. 



fifT. 2. At this time, also, the young birds are so much like the female, or 

 rather like both parents, and the males so diSerent in appearance from 

 what thev were in spring, that thousands of people in Pennsylvania, to 

 this day, persist in believing them to be a diiferent species altogether. 

 While others allow them indeed to be the same, but confidently assert 

 that they are all females — none but females, according to them, return- 

 ing in the fall ; what becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to 

 conceive. Even Mr. Mark Catesby, who resided for years, in the 

 country they inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined by 

 dissection great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated his experi- 

 ment the succeeding year, lest he should have been mistaken, declares 

 that he uniformly found them to be females. These assertions must 

 appear odd to the inhabitants of the Eastern States, to whom the change 

 of plumage in these birds is familiar, as it passes immediately under 

 their eye ; and also to those, who like myself, have kept them in cages, 

 and witnessed their gradual change of color. That accurate observer, 

 Mr. "William Bartram, appears, from the following extract, to have 

 taken notice of, or at least suspected this change of color in these birds 

 more than forty years ago. "Being in Charleston," says he, "in the 

 month of June, I observed a cage full of Rice-birds, that is of the yellow 

 or female color, who were very merry and vociferous, having the same 

 variable music with the pied or male bird, which I thought extraordinary, 

 and observing it to the gentleman, he assured me that they were all of 

 the male kind, taken the preceding spring ; but had changed their color, 

 and would be next spring of the color of the pied, thus changing color 

 with the seasons of the year. If this is really the case, it appears they 

 arc both of the same species intermixed, spring and fall." Without, 

 however, implicating the veracity of Catesby, who, I have no doubt, 

 believed as he wrote, a few words will easily explain why he was deceived. 

 The internal organization of undomesticated birds of all kinds, under- 

 goes a remarkable change, every spring and summer ; and those who 

 wi.sh to ascertain this point by dissection will do well to remember, that 

 in this bird those parts that characterize the male are, in autumn, no 

 larger than the smallest pin's head, and in young birds of the first year 

 can scarcely be discovered ; though in spring their magnitude in each is 

 at least one hundred times greater. To an unacquaintance with this 

 extraordinary circumstance I am persuaded has been owing the mistake 

 of Mr. Catesby that the females only return in the fall; for the same 

 opiitiMii I long entcrtaincfl myself, till a more particular examination 

 showed me the source of my mistake. Since that, I have opened and 

 examined many hundreds of these birds, in the months of September 

 and October, and, on the whole, have found about as many males as 

 females among them. The latter may be distinguished from the former 



