90 THE FINCHES 



doing so this perhaps makes my own observation the more interest- 

 ing, as showing us the first or earlier steps towards what might, in 

 time, and under favouring circumstances, become first a common, 

 and, at last, an almost exclusive habit. The larger cones, with their 

 scales, as I have seen them, more widely separated, should certainly 

 be easier than our own to rob, and, moreover, the seeds, being more 

 of a mouthful, or by the superiority of their flavour, may have made 

 a stronger appeal. But however this may be, we see here in this 

 familiar bird of our own, of ordinary Finch habits, the base, as it 

 were, of a ladder which, carried on, rung by rung, through various 

 members of the group to which it belongs, would link it, at last, 

 with the crossbill, whose structure has become abnormally modified, 

 and its geographical distribution more or less limited, in relation to 

 this particular diet. 



To me, indeed, it has always seemed one of the most interest- 

 ing things in field natural history, that, by the study of habits not 

 yet become remarkable in our own fauna, we can often better under- 

 stand essentially similar, but more highly developed, ones belonging 

 to allied species that we may never, very likely, have the oppor- 

 tunity of observing. This perhaps is a line of thought which may 

 be carried to an extreme descending into trivialities and if so, 

 I confess that it is my habit and intention so to carry it. Thus, 

 having just, "as in a glass, darkly," seen the greenfinch become a 

 crossbill, I will now imagine him on the way to becoming a sparrow ; 

 not, indeed, in a bodily sense as far as colour, at any rate, can do 

 so, he is protected from that but in that extreme boldness and 

 familiarity, amounting almost and some would say quite to a vice, 

 which has come to be a birthright of the last-named species. I do 

 not believe that this was always inherent in the bird's nature. In 

 so far as his habitat lies beyond our proximity, he retains who 

 can doubt it? the wild graces which belong to the tree- and the 

 rock sparrow. The vulgar taint has been doubtless induced by a too 



