ALPINE ACCENTOR. 299 



The birds at Cambridge and Wells may have been attracted 

 by the high stone buildings, which might seem to the 

 wanderers the best substitute for their own native crags with- 

 in reach. The Alpine Accentor builds in May among stones, 

 or in cavities of rocks, and sometimes in the roofs of houses, 

 on the mountain-sides. The nest is formed of rootlets, grass, 

 moss and wool, and lined with hair. The eggs are four to six 

 in number, of a fine light greenish-blue, measuring from 1"04 

 to '9 by from '6G to "62 in. The vignette at the end of this 

 article represents the nest, slightly altered from the figure in 

 Schinz's work on the nests and eggs of Swiss Birds (pi. 21). 



The bill is black at the tip, and yellowish-white at the 

 base ; the irides hazel : head, neck and ear-coverts, brownish- 

 grey ; back brown, streaked with darker blackish-brown ; 

 rump greyish-brown ; primaries blackish-brown, the middle 

 of each tertial still darker, edged on both sides with reddish- 

 brown, and tipped with dull white; wing-coverts reddish- 

 brown, varied with black, and tipped with white; tail above 

 dark brown, tipped with buflf: chin and throat dull white, 

 with a small black spot on each feather ; chest dark grey ; 

 breast and flanks varied with chestnut- coloured patches : 

 lower tail-coverts dark greyish-brown, edged with dull white ; 

 tail beneath ash-grey, tipped with dull huffy-white : legs and 

 toes orange-brown ; claws black. 



Length of the bird described six inches and a half. From 

 the carpal joint of the wing to the end of the third and 

 longest primary three inches and five-eighths : the second 

 feather longer than the fourth. 



The females do not differ in plumage from the males, 

 except that their colours are not so bright. The young are 

 said to have the spots on the throat hardly perceptible, but 

 the red of the wing-coverts more vivid. 



The genus Accentor has been very generally accepted by 

 ornithologists, though many of them are at a loss whether it 

 should be better placed in the Family Turdidce (or MeruUd(e 

 as some will have it) or in the Family Sylviidce, and the 

 group has been almost as often assigned to the one as to the 

 other. This fact, with many others that could be cited, fur- 



