156 BRITISH BIRDS. 
together by an unbroken series and are geographically distributed in a 
very irregular manner. The differences between these forms may be ex- 
pressed as follows :— 
Pal lance E. pyrrhuloides. Large and very pale. 
ge. 
a P ee ; Intermediate in size and rufous. 
ealleereall . scheniclus. ; 
"\ E. passerina. Small; black and white. 
The difficulty of discontinuous areas of distribution may be overcome by 
regarding the large-billed form as one race and the small-billed form as 
another. The small-billed form will then range across the Palearctic 
Region, the larger rufous birds of the west meeting the smaller black-and- 
white birds of the east in the valley of the Yenesay. The large-billed 
form will be a resident in Italy, Turkey, the deltas of the Danube and 
the Volga, Turkestan, the Altai Mountains and the Ussuri. Intermediate 
forms between the two are found at each extreme limit of the range—in 
Japan and in Spain, in the former country having exterminated both 
extreme forms. A somewhat similar difference of colour to that we have 
noticed in the small-billed form is also found in the large-billed form, and 
shows the usual climatic variation—the eastern and western forms, where 
the climate is humid, being rufous, and the central forms, where the climate 
is comparatively dry, being pale. 
The haunts of this bird in summer are near water—either the reed- 
grown willow-studded banks of sluggish rivers, the rushy sides of canals 
and large or small marshes, or, in wilder country, the banks of little 
streams, drains by the roadside, and swampy moorland. ‘The Reed-Bunt- 
ing, although a local bird, is one that frequents marshy places in wild as 
well as in cultivated districts, and seems as much at home in the roughest 
parts of the Highlands as on the wide-stretching reedy broads in the low- 
lying counties. The birds are usually seen in pairs in summer—each pair 
apparently keeping to a recognized beat, from which they seldom stray 
until the young are reared. ‘The cock is a very pretty bird, and rarely 
fails to arrest the attention as he either clings to some tall rush, or flitting 
in jerking flight over the placid waters, perches on some overhanging spray 
and pours out his simple little song. Sometimes he may be seen sitting 
on walls or rocks, more frequently upon a scrubby bush or on the solitary 
telegraph-wire stretching far away over the moors, or even on some tall 
shrub of heather, in all which situations he repeatedly warbles his song. 
It is a true Bunting’s song, very monotonous; but very often his homely 
strain, heard in places where sweeter music is absent, proves grateful to 
the ear and imbues the wilderness with life. It consists of a double note, 
repeated three or four times and concluded with a long-drawn one, which 
it seems to have considerable difficulty in uttering, and which resembles 
the note of the Corn-Bunting. Its call-note is a harsh and prolonged 
