78 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



many recruits, goldfinches (Carduelis elegans), 

 grey linnets (Linota cannabina), and green gros- 

 beaks (Coccothraustes Moris), pass in consider- 

 able numbers ; and such multitudes of the first- 

 named species are occasionally taken,* that the 

 market of the song-bird dealers is literally glutted 

 with them, even their most capacious family-cages 

 being quite filled with recently captured gold- 

 finches; and from this circumstance, as well as 

 from the comparatively trifling value attached to 

 these birds at this season when, from the imma- 

 turity of the greater proportion of the little pri- 

 soners, and the deficient state of their plumage, 

 the sex cannot be satisfactorily ascertained they 

 are frequently doomed to death, and being after- 

 wards tied up with yellow wagtails, green gros- 

 beaks and grey linnets, in variegated bundles, 

 from which their own little crimson heads protrude 

 like ripe berries, they are hawked about by the 

 juvenile members of the bird-catching fraternity, 

 and occasionally sold to those who can find it in 



* May not this account in some degree for the total dis- 

 appearance of the goldfinch from certain inland counties 

 during the winter months ? Herefordshire, for example ; 

 a fact to which the editor of the ' Zoologist ' has directed 

 the attention of his correspondents. ' Zoologist,' vol. iii. 

 page 984. 



