SISKIN 847 
it is most nearly allied to the GOLDFINCH, and both are often placed 
in the same genus by systematists ; but in its style of coloration, 
and still more in its habits, it resembles the REDPOLLS, though 
without their slender figure, being indeed rather short and stout of 
build. Yet it hardly yields to them in activity or in the grace of 
its actions, as it seeks its food from the catkins of the alder or birch, 
regardless of the attitude it assumes while so doing. Of an olive- 
green above, deeply tinted in some parts with black and in others 
lightened by yellow, and beneath of a yellowish-white again marked 
with black, the male of this species has at least a becoming if not a 
brilliant garb, and possesses a song that is not unmelodious, though 
the resemblance of some of its notes to the running-down of a piece 
of clockwork is more remarkable than pleasing. The hen is still 
more soberly attired ; but it is perhaps the Siskin’s disposition to 
familiarity that makes it so favourite a captive, and, though as a 
cage-bird it is not ordinarily long-lived, it readily adapts itself to 
the loss of liberty. Moreover, if anything like the needful accom- 
modation be afforded, it will build a nest and therein lay its eggs, 
but it rarely succeeds in bringing up its young in confinement. As 
a wild bird it breeds constantly, though locally, throughout the 
greater part of Scotland, and has frequently done so in England, 
but more rarely in Ireland. The greater portion, however, of the 
numerous bands which visit the British Islands in autumn and 
winter doubtless come from the Continent—perhaps even from far 
to the eastward, since its range stretches across Asia to Japan, in 
which country it is as favourite a cage-bird as with us. The nest 
of the Siskin is very like that of the Goldfinch, but seldom so neatly 
built ; the eggs, except in their smaller size, much resemble those 
of the GREENFINCH. 
A larger and more brightly coloured species, C. spinoides, inhabits 
the Himalayas, and another, C. tibetana, is found in Sikhim ; but the 
Siskin has many more relatives belonging to the New World, and 
in them serious modifications of structure, especially in the form of 
the bill, occur. Some of these relatives lead almost insensibly to 
the Greenfinch and its allies, others to the Goldfinch, the Redpolls 
and so on. Thus the Siskin perhaps may be regarded as one of the 
less modified descendants of a parent stock whence such forms as 
those just mentioned have sprung. Its striated plumage also 
favours this view, as an evidence of permanent immaturity or 
generalization of form, since striped feathers are so often the earliest 
clothing of many of these birds, which only get rid of them at their 
first moult. On this theory the Yellowbird- or North-American 
“Goldfinch,” C. tristis, would seem, with its immediate allies, to 
rank among the highest forms of the group, and the Pine-Goldfinch, 
C. pinus, of the same country, to be one of the lowest,—the cock of 
the former being generally of a bright jonquil hue, with black 
