FOOD OP THE GOLDFINCH. 



as I have noticed this bird, it has appeared to me 

 that it never makes any plants generally its food, 

 except those of the syngenesia class, and on these 

 it diets nearly the whole year. In the spring season 

 it picks out the seeds from the fir cones. During 

 the winter months it very frequently visits our 

 gardens, feeding on the seeds of the groundsel (se- 

 necio vulgaris), which chiefly abounds in cultivated 

 places, and vegetates there throughout the coldest 

 seasons. This, however, is a humble plant ; and 

 when covered by the snow, the poor birds are half 

 famished for want. We then see them striving to 

 satisfy their hunger by picking some solitary green 

 head of the plant remaining above the frozen snow, 

 and so tame, that they will suffer a very near ap- 

 proach before they take flight. As the frost con- 

 tinues, our little garden visiters diminish daily, and 

 by spring only a few pairs remain of all the flocks 

 of autumn. Yet it is very remarkable, notwith- 

 standing this natural predilection, how readily this 

 bird conforms to a perfect change in its diet, and 

 in all the habits of its life. Most of our little 

 songsters, when captured as old birds, become in 

 confinement sullen and dispirited ; want of exercise, 

 and of particular kinds of food, and their changes, 

 alter the quality of the fluids: they become fat- 

 tened, and indisposed to action by repletion; fits 

 and ailments ensue, and they mope and die. But 

 I have known our goldfinch, immediately after its 



