170 FRINGILLID^. 



much gesticulation — the feathers being puffed out and the 

 head sloped on one side or the other, while the whole body 

 throbs with each note, and the tail is swung laterally as 

 though to mark the time. Both sexes are said to sing. 

 The call-note, which is very frequently uttered, is soft and 

 plaintive. As a cage-bird the Bullfinch is principally prized 

 for its power of imitating a tune played to it on a flageolet 

 or on what is called a " bird-organ." In Germany the art 

 of teaching this species to utter unnatural strains, and of 

 thus perverting an animal into an indifferent musical 

 instrument, is found to be lucrative and is accordingly exten- 

 sively practised. 



The Bullfinch is commonly dispersed in suitable localities 

 throughout Great Britain, and, according to Thompson, it is 

 met with in every county, though at the same time is rather 

 scarce, in Ireland. It is not recorded from any of the 

 Hebrides, and an example, obtained at Lopness in 1809, is 

 the only one said to have appeared in Orkney, In Shetland, 

 in October 1863, Saxby saw a female at Halligarth, which 

 was afterwards shot and came into his possession. On the 

 continent its distribution is somewhat hard to trace, for the 

 form of Bullfinch which inhabits Northern and Eastern 

 Europe is a decidedly larger bird, the Pyrrhula major of 

 the eldest Brehm (Handb. Vog. Deutschl. p. 252), and the 

 occurrence of the true P. europcea in Scandinavia, Russia or 

 the Turkish dominions is very doubtful. It breeds however 

 in Silesia, Bohemia and many districts of Germany, mostly 

 in the hilly country, but towards the western limits of that 

 empire also in the wooded lowlands, while in winter it seems 

 to occur pretty generally. Following it further to the south- 

 ward, it is also found in Styria and Switzerland, as well as 

 in the beech-region of the mountains of Northern and 

 Central Italy, whence it even occasionally penetrates to 

 Sicily, and, though very rarely, has reached Malta. Loche 

 found two examples in the market at Algiers (Expl. Sc. de 

 I'Alg. Ois. i. p. 160). It inhabits parts of Holland, Belgium 

 and the whole of France, and probably also the north, 

 though it seems not as yet to have been observed in the 



