474 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



feet from the ground. Than the nest of our Goldfinch we have no more beau- 

 tiful specimen either of the basket in shajie or the felted in structure. Sym- 

 metrical in form, delicately and beautifully woven, and ingeniously and firmly 

 fastened around the forked twigs with which it is interlaced, it is an exqui- 

 site example of architectural beauty and finish. A beautiful specimen from 

 Wisconsin may be taken as typical. It measures three inches in diameter 

 and two in height. The cavity is one and a half inches wide at the rim, and 

 the deptli is the same. The base of this nest is a commingling of soft vege- 

 table wool, very fine stems of dried grasses, and fine strips of bark, all being 

 in very fine shreds. The sides, rim, and general exterior of the nest is made 

 up, to a large extent, of fine slender vegetable fibres, interwrought with 

 white and maroon-colored vegetable wool. These materials are closely and 

 densely felted together. The inner nest is softly and thoroughly lined with 

 a softer felting made of the plumose appendages or pappus of the seeds of 

 composite plants. 



The eggs, usually five, rarely six in number, are of a uniform bluish-white, 

 sharply pointed at one and rounded at the other end. They measure from 

 .65 to .67 of an inch in length and from .50 to .55 in breadth. Dr. Cooper 

 gives their measurement as .60 by .50 ; but of the contents of seven nests 

 before me not an egg is less than .65 in length, and but one so small as .50 

 in breadth. 



A n3st of this Finch, built in a young elm-tree in Hingham, eight feet from 

 the ground, was begun July 27, finished and the first egg laid August 1. By 

 the 4th five eggs had been deposited, and on the 16th they had all been 

 hatched. 



Chrysomitris psaltria, var. psaltria, Bona.p. 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOLDFINCH ; ARKANSAS GOLDFINCH. 



Fringilla psaltriM, Say, Loug's E.xped. R. Mts. II, 1823, 40. — Aud. Orn. Biog. V, 1839, 

 85, pi. cccxciv. Fringilla {Carduelis) psaltria, BoN\ Am. Orn. I, 1825, 54, pi. vi, f. 3. 

 Carduelis psaltria, Aud. Syn. 1839, 117. — Ib. Birds Am. Ill, 1841, 184, pi. clxxxiii. 

 Chrysomitris psaltria, Bp. List, 1838. — Ib. Consp. 1850, 516. — Gambel, Jour. A. N. 

 S. 2d series I, 1847, 52 (female). — Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 422. — Cooper, Orn. 

 Cal. I, 168. 



Sp. Char. Male. Upper parts and sides of head and neck olive-green. Hood, but 

 not sides of liead below eyes, lores (or auriculars?), upper tail-covcrts, wings, and tail black. 

 Beneath bright yellow. A band across the tips of the greater coverts, the ends of neai'ly 

 all the quills, the outer edges of the tertiaries, the extreme bases of all the primaries ex- 

 cept the outer two, and a long rectangular patch on the inner webs of the outer three 

 tail-feathers near the middle, Avhite. Female with the upper parts generally, and the sides 

 olive-green ; the wings and tail brown, their white marks as in the male. Length, 4.25 ; 

 wing, 2.40 ; tail, 1.85. Young like the female, but wing-bands more fulvous. 



Hab. Southern Rocky Mountains to the coast of California; north to Salt Lake City 

 (June 19 ; Ridgway), and Siskiyou Co., Cal. (Vuille) ; south to Sonora (Arispe, Feb. 

 26 ; E. S. Wakefield). 



