HAWFINCH. 103 



empire. Throughout Europe, the northern parts already 

 named heing excluded, its distribution requires no additional 

 notice, save the remark that it is there, as with us, a more 

 or less local species and in most places is rare. In all 

 the countries it inhabits, the Hawfinch is most generally 

 a resident — that is to say as regards the adults, since the 

 young unquestionably leave their birth-place towards autumn. 

 This sedentary condition of the former may be to some 

 extent understood from the consideration that their food con- 

 sists in great part of the seeds of trees, the fleshy pulp of 

 the most succulent and sapid fruits being wholly rejected for 

 the sake of the enclosed kernel — and whether it be the hard 

 stone of the cherry which is adroitly cracked between the 

 bird's mandibles or the comparatively fragile shell of the 

 hornbeam's keys which offers no resistance worth mentioning 

 to the same powerful crushers, the contained seed is the sole 

 object sought. 



The bill of the adult male in summer is a deep leaden- 

 blue : the irides greyish white : a thin black line stretches 

 across the forehead and expanding on the lores surrounds 

 the eyes ; the top and sides of the head dull orange-brown, 

 lightest and tinged with ochreous towards the forehead and 

 on the cheeks, darkest on the temples and sinciput ; nape 

 and sides of the neck ash-grey ; upper part of the back, 

 scapulars and tertials, dark chestnut-brown which becomes 

 paler on the lower part of the back ; middle wing-coverts 

 white, except the three innermost, which are dull orange- 

 brown ; the other wing-coverts black ; wing-quills black, 

 glossed with steel-blue on the portions left uncovered when 

 the wing is folded, with an irregularly shaped white patch 

 on the inner web — these patches decreasing in size from 

 within outward, and forming a conspicuous band when the 

 wing is open ; the sixth and four succeeding primaries formed 

 like a bill-hook, as figured in the vignette ; the secondaries 

 are nearly square at the tip; rump and upper tail-coverts dull 

 orange-brown; the two middle tail-quills greyish-brown, 

 tinged with rufous and indistinctly tipped with white ; the 

 rest of the tail-quills black at the base ami on the outer web, 



