Hybrid Fringillidce.



353



become brighter in colouring, showing in addition male House

Sparrow characters, and a young hen that lived six months,

although resembling a lien House Sparrow, exhibited traces of

chocolate colour on each side of its head, together with slight

traces of Tree Sparrow cheek marking. A mental comparison

of the adult and nestling plumages of both sexes of the pure

species alongside these particulars is of considerable interest.


Several “Cardinal” and “Bunting” Hybrids have also

been bred, namely, such crosses as :


Paroaria cucullata x Paroaria larvata


,, ,, x Cardinalis carditialis


,, ,, x Gubernatrix cristala


Cardinal is cardinalis x ,, ,,


Zonotrichia leucophrys x Zonotrichia pileata

The latter by Mr. D. Seth-Smith ( Avic . Mag., f. 331, Vol. III.,

N.S.) A11 account Of what one may be pardoned for calling a


Ploceid x Fringillid Hybrid appears in Vol. I., N.S., f. 222, and

rementioned by Dr. Butler in his Notes on Hybrid Ploceidae.

Dr. Greene’s correspondent “ White Doe” may have been unused

to young birds and, probably, mistook the thick and clumsy

shortened head of a nestling for a sign of “Manuakin” parentage;

especially as no information is forthcoming as to the colour of

the birds’ feathers. Concerning Saffron Finch hybrids, in Bird

Notes , Vol. 8 , f. 195, Mr. Willford, Ryde, I.W., mentions having

bred in his aviary birds believed to be the result of a cross

between Sycalis flaveola and Serinus flaviventris. Dr. Butler has

crossed A. flaveola and A. pelzelni , and in “ P'oreigu Birds for

Cage and Aviary” remarks upon the hybrid males “ being usually

indistinguishable from the sire of the Saffron Finch, but the

females more nearly approaching their mother.” He was also

successful in obtaining a hybrid produced from the union of a

male Canary and hen Saffron Finch in 1898. Dr. Karl Russ, in

the translated version of Canary Birds, refers to Nonpareil and

Indigo Buntings as “ adapted ” for hybrid breeding with a

Canary.* In this country at any rate I cannot ascertain that such



* I have fully entered into the question of hybridizing' the Indigo Finch and Canary

in Vol. I. of “ Foreign Birds for Cage and Aviary ” p. 124, where I record the fact that the

late Mr. W. E D. Scott assured me that he had bred this hybrid; his plan was to turn

males of various finches in with females of other species in a birdroom ; so that all result¬

ing offspring were necessarily mules.— Ed. pro. tern.



