400 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 
making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries, gooseberries, 
and wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its 
crop or craw no buds were to be seen, but a mass of kernels of 
the stones of fruits. Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the 
spot where plum-trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat 
hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty; these were 
the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call this bird 
Coccothraustes, i.e., berry-breaker, because with its large horny 
beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone-fruits for the sake 
of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, 
and only in winter.—WHITE. 
I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of 
the hardest winters ; at which season of the year I have had in my 
possession two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in 
different years.x— MARKWICK. 
