426 EMBERIZID.F. 



Tawny, and the Snow Bunting of authors, are only terms 

 which refer to one and the same species under different states 

 of plumage. Colonel Montagu in the Appendix to the 

 Suj)plement of his Ornithological Dictionary, quotes a por- 

 tion of a letter to himself from Mr. Foljambe, — an excellent 

 practical ornithologist, — which first furnished to him a key 

 to the true elucidation of the subject : the extract is as fol- 

 lows : — " A few years ago I shot more than forty from the 

 same flock, during severe weather in the month of January, 

 hardly any two of which exhibited precisely the same plu- 

 mage, but varied from the perfect Tawny to the Snow Bunt- 

 ing in its whitest state ; the feathers of those of the interme- 

 diate state being more or less charged with white." 



The Snow Bunting may be generally considered as only 

 a winter visiter to this country, and to the other temperate 

 parts of Europe ; a portion of the young birds of the year, 

 bred in high northern latitudes, annually visiting our islands. 

 It is only in severe weather, and late in the winter season, 

 that the older birds make their appearance, the young birds 

 always venturing farthest to the southward. The Snow 

 Bunting is an inhabitant, during the breeding-season, of the 

 Arctic regions, and the islands of the Polar Sea. Captain 

 Scoresby says it resorts to the shores of Spitzbergen in large 

 flocks. It is included by Captain Sabine in his Birds of 

 Greenland ; and he says, also, that it was very numerous in 

 the North Georgian Islands, where they were amongst the 

 earliest arrivals. Captain James Ross, in his Appendix, — 

 which has been frequently quoted, — says that it abounds in 

 all parts of the Arctic regions, from the middle or end of 

 April to the end of September. Dr. Richardson states that 

 this bird " breeds in the northernmost of the American is- 

 lands, and on all the shores of the continent from Chester- 

 field inlet to Behring's Straits. The most southerly of its 

 breeding stations in the New World, that has been recorded, 



