GREENFINCH. 481 



feed in corn fields and stubble lands till winter and its pri- 

 vations oblige them to resort to tlie farnier*'s barn-doors and 

 stack-yard. 



The Greenfinch is found generally in all the cultivated 

 parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, except, as stated 

 by Mr. Macgillivray, the western and northern islands of 

 Scotland. It is included by authors among the birds of 

 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ; but according to M. Nils- 

 son, it is more common in Sweden in winter than in sum- 

 mer. It is common in all the countries of southern Europe, 

 and is found even as far as Madeira. In a south-eastern 

 direction it was observed by Mr. Strickland to be common 

 at Smyrna. 



M. F. H. Kittlitz, a distinguished naturalist, who went 

 with a Russian Expedition in 1827 to the South Seas, in 

 his published notes of the birds observed by himself, men- 

 tions at page 33, that he found this Greenfinch rather nu- 

 merous in small flocks on the coast of Bonin, or, as it is 

 named in some maps, Bonin-Siam, an island between four 

 hundred and five hundred miles east of Japan. The birds 

 inhabited tall woods near the shore ; and M. Kittlitz adds, 

 that they ran with facility, and searched for their food on 

 the ground. 



M. Temminck, in the Third Part of his Manual, states 

 that there are two allied species, of the size of our Green- 

 finch, which inhabit Japan ; but they differ sufficiently in the 

 colours of their plumage to constitute two species distinct 

 from our own. 



The adult male has the beak of a pale flesh colour ; the 

 irides hazel ; the whole of the head, neck, back, and upper 

 part of the wings olive green, or wax yellow; the exterior 

 edges of the wings, from the carpal joint to the base of the 

 primaries, gamboge yellow ; the primaries greyish black, with 

 brilliant gamboge yellow edges on two-thirds of their length, 



VOL. I. 2 I 



