198 FRINGILLlDiE 



fir-twigs : then was a layer of coarse, dry grass, and it was 

 lined with finer grass and a few long hairs. It was lodged 

 close to the stern of a Scotch fir, ahout thirty inches helow 

 its summit, at the base of the shoots of the year 1837, and 

 supported by five or six ascending lateral branches which 

 so concealed it that it could have been scarcely perceptible 

 from the ground. The Gloucestershire nest (ut supra) is 

 described as built of dead twigs of the larch and spruce, 

 within which it was formed of dry grass and tender stalks, 

 compacted with wool and the whole lined with horsehair. 

 Other nests from Scotland are neatly and firmly built — 

 externally of fir- sticks and heather, with a few splinters of 

 decayed wood. Mixed with these is a little fine grass inter- 

 woven with long vegetable fibres, and the lining is of white 

 hair-lichen with some bits of moss and wool. The outward 

 size of the nest varies a good deal, for it occasionally 

 measures as much as eight inches in diameter, but its 

 internal dimensions are pretty constant. 



The eggs, in number four or, rarely, five, are very like 

 Greenfinches' except that they are larger, measuring from 

 •94 to *73 by from '68 to '57 in. Their colour is french- 

 white, sometimes tinged with very pale blue, and they are 

 sparingly speckled, spotted and blotched with reddish-brown 

 of two or three shades, the lightest being in the form of 

 suffused patches, and the darkest in that of well-defined 

 markings — these last being often surrounded by a penumbra 

 of lighter red, but occasionally dwindling to mere lines. 



On the European continent the Crossbill inhabits almost 

 all pine-forests from Lapland to Spain on the west and 

 to Greece on the east. It is also permanently resident in 

 Mauritania. Though more abundant towards the north, it 

 yet breeds in nearly the extreme southern countries of its 

 range, and its nest has been found equally on the Atlas and 

 on Parnassus. Gifted with considerable power of flight, and 

 impelled by casual dearth of food to exercise that faculty, it 

 visits, though in the character only of a wanderer, spots that 

 possess few or none of the requisites for its peculiar needs, 

 and thus it has been obtained on Bear Island (lat. 74° 30') by 



