FRINGILLIDS. 195 
to the gardener and the agriculturist, its food con- 
sisting principally of the seeds of various sorts of 
weeds, such as thistles, groundsel, plantain, chick- 
weed &c.; the young birds are for a time mostly fed 
upon caterpillars and other insects.* In confine- 
ment they may be kept on the same food as the 
Canary, but always show a great partiality for 
green food and wild seeds. 
The nest is a very pretty, neat structure, quite as 
neat as that of the Chaffinch: it is placed in low, 
thick bushes, sometimes evergreens, and occasion- 
ally in apple-trees: it is made of grass, fine roots, 
moss and wool, and lined with willow-down, feathers 
and hair: if it is supplied, even in its wild state, 
with anything better suited to its purpose it will 
make use of it. 
The Goldfinch, as I said before, is the brightest 
and gayest-coloured of all our Finches: it is some- 
what smaller, and more slender in form, than the 
Chaffinch. The beak is nearly white, the point dark 
horn-colour ; irides dusky brown; forehead, and all 
round the base of the beak as far as to the eye, 
crimson ; top of the head, and a circle at the back of 
the cheeks and ear-coverts, black; cheeks and ear- 
coverts duil whitish brown; there is a lightish spot 
on the nape; back, rump and scapulars yellowish 
* Yarrell, vol. 1., p. 568. 
Piald epsobT: 
$2 
