6o BULLFINCH— BUNTING 



i. pp. 253, 254), makes sixteen genera, one of them, 3Iolpastes, being 

 that which he considers to contain what may be called the genuine 

 Bulbuls, formerly included in the genus Pycnonotus, but since 

 separated therefrom, on characters, however, which seem to be of 

 the slightest. No fewet than nine species are now recognized as 

 inhabiting various parts of the Indian Empire and Ceylon, that 

 found in Bengal and to the northward, M. pygseus or hengalensis, 

 being perhaps the best known, but Madras, the Punjab, Burma, and 

 Tenasserim have each its own form or species. They are said to 

 be familiar garden-birds, and are usually common, going about in 

 pairs with a melodious chirping. 



BULLFINCH, doubtless so called from the thickness of its 

 head and neck, when compared vnth other members of the Family 

 Fringillidse (Finch), to which it belongs — the familiar bird, Pyrrhula 

 eiiropxa, which hardly needs description. The varied plumage of 

 the cock — his bright red breast and his grey back, set off by his coal- 

 black head and quills — is naturally attractive ; while the facility 

 with which he is tamed, and his engaging disposition in con- 

 finement, make him a popular cage-bird, — to say nothing of the 

 fact (which in the opinion of so many adds to his charms) of his 

 readily learning to " pipe " a tune, or some bars of one, though this 

 perversion of his natural notes is hardly agreeable to the orni- 

 thologist. B}'' gardeners the Bullfinch has long been regarded as a 

 deadly enemy, from its undoubted destruction of the buds of 

 fruit-trees in spring-time, though whether the destruction is really 

 so much of a detriment is by no means undoubted. Northern and 

 Eastern Europe is inhabited by a larger form, P. major, which 

 differs in nothing but size and more vivid tints from that which is 

 common in the British Isles and Western Europe. A very distinct 

 species, P. murina, remarkable for its dull coloration, is peculiar to 

 the Azores, and several others are found in Asia from the 

 Himalayas to Japan. More recently a Bullfinch, P. cassini, has been 

 discovered in Alaska, being the first recognition of this genus in 

 the New World. {Cf. Stejneger, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1887, pp. 

 103-110.) 



BULLHEAD and BULLSEYE, names applied chiefly in 

 Ireland and North America to the Golden and Grey Plovers ; but 

 the former also given locally to the Golden-eye. 



BUNTING, Old English " Buntyle," Scottish "Buntlin," a word 

 of uncertain origin,^ properly the common English name of the bird 



1 Prof. Skeat (Etymol. Diet. ) has suggested a connexion with the old verb, 

 still extant as a dialectic form, hunten = to butt ; but this is not very apparent. 

 He has also cited the Scottish word buntin = short and thick, or plump, which, 

 however, seems as likely to have been derived from the bird, for the clumsy 



