220 FRINGILLID^, 



on the rigging and deck of the steamer which was about six 

 hundred miles from the Newfoundland coast. He secured 

 ten or twelve examples, of which one or two escaped as the 

 ship neared the Irish coast and made straight for land. Two 

 others flew out of their cage in the streets of Liverpool, and 

 five were sent to Mr. Gray, with whom they lived for a few 

 months. There have probably been many other men who 

 like Dr. Dewar have helped winged wanderers across the 

 Atlantic — with what success we may perhaps guess, though 

 we shall never know, from the American element in our list 

 of so-called " British " birds.* 



Except perhaps in Heligoland, where it seems to have 

 occurred, this Crossbill appears to be otherwise quite unkuown 

 in Europe, and continental writers are not wanting who 

 deny that it has ever reached this quarter of the globe. 

 Many years since the elder Reinhardt reported (K. Dansk 

 Selsk. Naturvid. Afhandl. 1838, p. 92) his receipt of a dried 

 specimen, apparently an adult male, which* had been brought 

 by an Esquimaux from the east coast of Greenland, and his 

 son mentions (Ibis, 1861, p. 8) that in later years another 

 adult male and three young birds, now in the Royal Museum 

 at Copenhagen, were obtained in South Greenland. To that 

 desolate country it is of course only a chance straggler, but 

 in Newfoundland (where, according to Mr. Reeks, it is 

 known as the Spruce-bird) it is common throughout the 

 year, being most abundant during winter, when it gathers in 

 flocks of from five to twenty, and feeds chiefly on the seeds 

 of the Abies alba, as it does throughout the whole of its 

 range, which stretches across the breadth of the continent 

 from Labrador to Alaska. Richardson observed it in lat. 

 62° N. and thought it probably went as high as the dense 

 forests of white spruce extend. It is recorded by Mr. Weiz 

 as breeding at Okkak in Labrador (Proc. Bost. Soc. N.H. x. 

 p. 267) and by Mr. Boardman as doing the like in winter at 

 Calais in the State of Maine {oj). cit. ix. p. 126). The only 



* Two white-winged Crossbills shot by Saxby at Halligarth in Unst, Sept. 4tli, 

 1859, would seem from his jjattial description to have presented American 

 characteristics. ' What became of the specimens the Editor does not know. 



