34 FRINGILLULE. 



IT is not improbable that an American White-winged 

 Crossbill might be among the number of White-winged 

 Crossbills that have been already taken in this country. 

 The male specimen in Mr. Gould's fine representations of 

 the Birds of Europe, was coloured, there is no doubt, 

 from a North- American example. The figure in Mr. 

 Ey ton's book on the Rarer British Birds, page 21, was 

 drawn from an American specimen in my own collection, 

 which I bought at the sale of the contents of the Museum 

 of the late Joshua Brookes, Esq., but the label on the case 

 bears no reference to any geographical locality. 



There is, however, one undoubted instance of the occur- 

 rence of the American White-winged Crossbill in England. 

 In September, 1845, Mr. Edward B. Fitton exhibited at 

 an evening meeting of the Zoological Society a fine speci- 

 men of this bird, Loxia leucoptera (Gmelin), which he had 

 picked up dead upon the shore at Exmouth, on the 17th 

 of that month. It appeared to have been injured on the 

 back of the head, and to have crept into a crevice of one 

 of the loose fragments of rock on the shore, where it was 

 found by Mr. Fitton, partly covered with wet sand. 



The wind at the time was south-west, and had been 

 blowing hard from north-west to west and south-west for 

 some days. This bird, while in the flesh, I examined with 

 Mr. Fitton : on dissection it proved to be an adult male, I 

 believe in its second year. The stomach was empty. When, 

 some time afterwards, Mr. Edward Fitton went to reside 

 permanently at the Canterbury Settlement, in New Zea- 

 land, he very kindly sent me the bird, as a remembrance, 

 and the representation preceding this subject was drawn 

 from his specimen. 



I may here mention that the White-winged Crossbills of 

 both countries have now been taken in England, and even 

 in the autumnal season of the same year, at which time 



