128 FRINGILLID^. 



can in this case be no question as to the species. Subse- 

 quently, as he stated in his ' Illustrations of British Birds,' 

 he twice took undoubted nests of this bird — one on St. Anne's 

 Hill near Chertsey in the same county, and the other at no 

 great distance in a hedge near the Thames. The first of 

 these again was built in a furze-bush : the second in a white- 

 thorn about five feet from the ground. Mr. Harting says that 

 a pair bred near Hampstead in 1853, and that a cock-bird was 

 taken there August 9th, 1871. The Messrs. Mathews speak 

 (Zool. p. 2429) of frequent instances of its nidification in 

 Oxfordshire, but herein there must surely be some error. 

 Mr. More learned that it had been seen since in Gloucester- 

 shire in May; and Mr. Kerr records (Zool. s.s. 3410) the 

 appearance of a flock of about twenty, almost all young of 

 the year, in Denbighshire, August 6th, 1872, suggesting the 

 possibility of their having been bred in the vicinity. Neville 

 Wood mentions a pair which frequented a wood in Derby- 

 shire in the summer of 1831, and must have been bred 

 there. Waterton informed Mr. More that the Siskin had 

 bred at Walton Hall, near Wakefield ; and Mr. Howitt of 

 Lancaster sent the author word that in the summer of 1836 

 six pairs were seen in that neighbourhood, and later in the 

 season several of the young. Bolton, in 1794, announced 

 his being informed that the Siskin bred in juniper-bushes 

 in Westmoreland, but there seems to be no later observation 

 of the bird as indigenous to that locality. Mr. Dale records 

 (Zool. pp. 2188, 2189) his finding a nest with four eggs, 

 near the top of a tall spruce-tree at Brancepeth in Durham, 

 May 8th, 1848 ; and early in the following July, according 

 to Mr. Hancock, Mr. Kobson met with a flock near Swalwell 

 in the same county ; while Mr. Storey says (Zool. s.s. p. 

 4420) that he obtained a cock-bird in 1874 which had been 

 taken from a nest in a fir-tree at Tudhoe near Durham the 

 same year. In Scotland the breeding of the Siskin has been 

 so often noticed* that any precise naming of the localities 



It is singular that Maegillivray had but a small acquaintance with this very 

 common bird. How that came to pass cannot be explained, but the fact is plain 

 from his own statements. 



