THE CROSSBILL 103 
THE CROSSBILL 
LOXIA CURVIROSTRA. 
Bill equalling in length the middle toe, point of the lower mandible extending 
beyond the ridge of the upper mandible ; plumage variegated, according 
to age and sex, with green, yellow, orange, and brick-red. Length six 
and ahalfinches. Eggs bluish white, speckled with red-brown. \ 
THE beak of this bird was pronounced by Buffon ‘an error and 
defect of Nature, and a useless deformity’. A less dogmatic, but 
more trustworthy authority, our countryman, Yarrell, is of a 
different opinion. ‘During a series of observations’, he says, 
‘on the habits and structure of British birds, I have never met with 
a more interesting or more beautiful example of the adaptation of 
means to an end, than is to be found in the beak, the tongue, and 
their muscles, in the Crossbill.’ No one can read the chapter 
of British Birds devoted to the Crossbill (in which the accom- 
plished author has displayed even more than his usual amount 
of research and accurate observation) without giving a ready 
assent to the propriety of the latter opinion. Unfortunately the 
bird is not of common occurrence in this country, or there are 
few who would not make an effort to watch it in its haunts, and 
endeavour to verify, by the evidence of their own eyes, the interest- 
ing details which have been recorded of its habits. I have never 
myself succeeded in catching a sight of a living specimen, and am 
therefore reduced to the necessity of quoting the descriptions of 
others. Family parties of this species visit—1907—a small wood of 
pine trees in the valley of the Kennet near Theale some winters, as 
well as other scattered pine-forest lands in the southern counties, 
and across the Solway and northward it nests in suitable districts. 
The Crossbill is about the size of the Common Bunting, and, 
like it and the Hawfinch, is a remarkably stout bird, having a 
strong bill, a large head, short thick neck, compact ovate body, 
short feet of considerable strength, rather long wings, and moderately 
large tail. Its plumage, in which green or red predominates, 
according to the age of the bird, is much more gaudy than that 
of our common birds, and approaches that of the Parrots, a tribe 
which it also resembles in some of its habits. Though only occas- 
ional visitors with us, Crossbills are plentiful in Germany, Bavaria, 
Sweden, and Norway all the year round, and are occasionally mis- 
chievous in orchards and gardens, on account of their partiality 
to the seeds of apples, which they reach by splitting the fruit with 
one or two blows of their stout bills. Food of this kind, however, 
they can only obtain in autumn; at other seasons, and, indeed, 
all the year round in districts remote from orchards, they feed 
principally on the seeds of various kinds of fir, which they extract 
from the cone by the joint action of their beak and tongue. The 
