178 FRTNGILLID/E. 



1831 by Selby (Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Newcastle, i. p. 265) 

 as having been shot at Bill Quay near Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 and at that time in the possession of Mr. Anthony Clapham, 

 but now the property of Mr. Backhouse. Thirdly is a male 

 example which the Editor is informed by Mr. Byne is in his 

 collection, and that he believes it to have been killed near 

 Exeter in the winter of 1854-5 and brought to his late father 

 by whom it was preserved. In the next rank to these — the 

 only presumably British-killed specimens known to exist, come 

 two which were said in 1845, by Lubbock (Faun. Norf. p. 

 36), to have been obtained near Great Yarmouth and to have 

 been then in a collection in that town. It appears, from the 

 investigations of Mr. Stevenson and others, that they belonged 

 to the late Mr. Miller and that, at the sale of his collection in 

 1853, they were lost sight of. To these two examples are 

 probably referable the statements of Messrs. Gurney and 

 Fisher (Zool. p. 1313) as to a pair of Pine-Grosbeaks sup- 

 posed to have been killed near Bungay, and another pair at 

 Kaveningham in Norfolk — the notices of which may be fairly 

 taken to concern the same individuals, but the story of their 

 having a nest must be dismissed as in the highest degree 

 unlikely. Then there is the case of an adult cock-bird said 

 (Zool. p. 1025) to have been shot near Rochdale in February 

 1845, which was in the late Mr. Hamlet Clark's collection when 

 it was seen by Mr. Bond, and no doubt can exist as to the 

 specific determination of the specimen. Since the dispersal, 

 however, of this collection its fate is unknown. 



For one reason or other little if any trust can be placed in the 

 remaining records of the appearance of this species in Britain.* 



* There are more than half-a-dozen instances in which it has professedly been 

 seen in Great Britain, but nothing which can be called an act of identification 

 has followed the observation. They are : — (1) A flock of about a hundred un- 

 known birds that came to a hemp-yard in Pembrokeshire in Sept. 1694 as 

 reported by a Mr. Roberts to Lhwyd (Phil. Trans, xxvii. pp. 464, 466) who 

 suspected they were " Virginia Nightingals" (Cardinalis Tiryinianus) but later 

 writers suggested that they were Pine-Grosbeaks ; (2) The bird.s seen Aug. 5th, 

 1769, by Pennant (Tour in Scotl. Ed. 5, i. p. 132) at [Invercauld in Aberdeen- 

 shire ; (3) A great number which, with Crossbills, for two years past had, ac- 

 cording to Don's information in 1813 (Headrick's ' Gen. View Agricult. Angus' 

 \}. 43), done much damage to the woods of Glammis and Lindertis in Forfarshire ; 



