14 BRIGHT FEATHERS, 
royal tint and tinted title. In its proper place, the reader will find a 
full description of the livery of this handsome species. 
Of late years, I have noted a seeming increase in the numbers of 
these birds in this section, although I cannot recall a season in which 
they have been uncommon. It is probably owing to this fact that they 
have excited so much of curiosity and interest in the minds and eyes of 
otherwise unobservant individuals. Their breeding localities also, as a 
natural consequence seem to be tending toward those sections in which 
their numbers are enlarging. Many of our birds once rare are becom- 
ing quite common, and wece versa; whether this be owing to certain 
physical changes in nature, to the advance of civilization and the artificial 
work of man, or to some unknown cause, must for the present remain 
to us a mystery. That this fact, regarding the species under consid- 
eration, has been noted by others than myself, there is abundant evi- 
dence to substantiate. Mr. R. F. Pearsall, of New York, in a commu- 
nication to the Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, for April 
1879, says: ‘It has been a matter of remark that several of our once 
rare birds have increased in numbers within a few years, and I think in 
no ease is this so apparent as in that of a Purple Finch. At the same 
time its distribution extends over a much larger range. It was formerly 
considered a strictly Northern migrant, but has recently become resi- 
dent in Massachusetts, where it breeds quite plentifully in certain 
sections.” 
The species, too, seems gradually but surely to be extending itself 
each successive season into southerly localities ; the same writer contin- 
ues: “ Among some notes taken at Bayside, L. I., I find under date 
of April 21, of this year. ‘Saw a Purple Finch (male) in full song and 
plumage and apparently resident.’ In the early part of June I visited 
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