LAPLAND BUNTING. 467 



article, has not adopted the genus Plectrophanes of Meyer, 

 but has made two sections of the Buntings, Emberiza, the 

 second of which contains the species ranged by others in 

 the new genus Plectrophanes. 



Pennant, in his Arctic Zoology, says the Lapland Bunt- 

 ing is found in Siberia, and near the Uralian chain. To- 

 wards winter a few migrate southward as far as Switzer- 

 land. M. Necker in his paper in the Transactions of the 

 Natural History Society of Geneva, mentions that this bird 

 had been taken occasionally with Larks in that vicinity. 



M. Nilsson includes this bird in his Fauna of Scandina- 

 via. It inhabits the Faroe Islands, Spitzbergen, Green- 

 land, and Iceland in summer, and from thence westward to 

 Hudson^s Bay. Some stragglers are occasionally seen in 

 the northern parts of the United States. Dr. Richardson, 

 in the second volume of the Fauna Boreali Americana, 

 says, " I never met this species in the interior of the fur 

 countries during winter, and I suspect that its principal 

 retreats in that season are on the borders of lakes Huron 

 and Superior, and to the country extending to the westward 

 on the same parallel. In the year 1827 it appeared on the 

 plains at Carlton House, about the middle of May, in very 

 large flocks, amongst which were many Shore Larks, 

 Alauda alpestris, and a few individuals of Plectrophanes 

 picta. During their stay of ten or twelve days they fre- 

 quented open spots, where recent fires had destroyed the 

 grass. They came to Cumberland House a few days later 

 in the same season, and there kept constantly in the fur- 

 rows of a newly-ploughed field. In the preceding year 

 were seen, though in smaller flocks, in the vicinity of Fort 

 Franklin, latitude 65^, in the beginning of May ; and the 

 crops of those that were then killed were filled with the 

 seeds of Arbutus alpina. They breed in moist meadows 



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