60 BULLFINCH—BUNTING 
i. pp. 253, 254), makes sixteen genera, one of them, Molpastes, being 
that which he considers to contain what may be called the genuine 
Bulbuls, formerly included in the genus Pycnonotus, but since 
separated therefrom, on characters, however, which seem to be of 
the slightest. No fewer than nine species are now recognized as 
inhabiting various parts of the Indian Empire and Ceylon, that 
found in Bengal and to the northward, I. pygwus or bengalensis, 
being perhaps the best known, but Madras, the Punjab, Burma, and 
Tenasserim have each its own form or species. They are said to 
be familiar garden-birds, and are usually common, going about in 
pairs with a melodious chirping. 
BULLFINCH, doubtless so called from the thickness of its 
head and neck, when compared with other members of the Family 
Fringillide (FINCH), to which it belongs—the familiar bird, Pyrrhula 
europea, Which hardly needs description. The varied plumage of 
the cock—his bright red breast and his grey back, set off by his coal- 
black head and quills—is naturally attractive ; while the facility 
with which he is tamed, and his engaging disposition in con- 
finement, make him a popular cage-bird,—to say nothing of the 
fact (which in the opinion of so many adds to his charms) of his 
readily learning to “ pipe” a tune, or some bars of one, though this 
perversion of his natural notes is hardly agreeable to the orni- 
thologist. By gardeners the Bullfinch has long been regarded as a 
deadly enemy, from its undoubted destruction of the buds of 
fruit-trees in spring-time, though whether the destruction is really 
so much of a detriment is by no means undoubted. Northern and 
Eastern Europe is inhabited by a larger form, P. major, which 
differs in nothing but size and more vivid tints from that which is 
common in the British Isles and Western Europe. A very distinct 
species, P. murina, remarkable for its dull coloration, is peculiar to 
the Azores, aud several others are found in Asia from the 
Himalayas to Japan. More recently a Bullfinch, P. cassini, has been 
discovered in Alaska, being the first recognition of this genus in 
the New World. (Cf. Stejneger, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1887, pp. 
103-110.) 
BULLHEAD and BULLSEYE, names applied chiefly in 
Ireland and North America to the Golden and Grey PLOVERS ; but 
the former also given locally to the GOLDEN-EYE. 
BUNTING, Old English “ Buntyle,” Scottish “ Buntlin,” a word 
of uncertain origin, properly the common English name of the bird 
1 Prof. Skeat (Ztymol. Dict.) has suggested a connexion with the old verb, 
still extant as a dialectic form, bunten = to butt ; but this is not very apparent. 
He has also cited the Scottish word buntin = short and thick, or plump, which, 
however, seems as likely to have been derived from the bird, for the clumsy 
