MEALY REDPOLE. 559 



I am, however, enabled to supply from another quarter. 

 Mr. Pelerin, a Naturalist, living in Great Russell Street, 

 who has prepared for himself an extensive collection of the 

 crania and skeletons of animals, has most freely allowed me 

 the use of a cranium of each of our Redpoles from which 

 the representations forming the subject of the vignette at 

 the end of the account of the next Redpole were carefully 

 drawn; where, in addition to the side and back view of 

 each, the double parallel lines exhibit at once the compa- 

 rative length and breadth of each head.* 



In the Museum at Saffron Walden, there is a male of the 

 Mealy Redpole, which was killed in that neighbourhood in 

 May 1836, and one shot by Mr. Pelerin at Oundle was 

 sufficiently advanced in its spring plumage to have acquired 

 a considerable portion of red colour on the breast ; the oc- 

 currence of this species, for such I consider it, is, however, 

 most frequent in winter ; many specimens have been ob- 

 tained in England, and some in Scotland. Its habits 

 throughout the year are probably very similar to those of 

 the Little Common Redpole next to be described, and with 

 which it has frequently been confounded. Its food is the 

 seeds of various forest trees. 



Thinking it not improbable that the Mealy Redpole, 

 named canescens by Mr. Gould, as here quoted, may be the 

 same bird as that which has been called Borealis by Messrs. 

 Temminck and P. Roux, the eleventh part of Mr. Gould's 

 Birds of Europe having been published, I believe, before the 

 appearance of the third part of M. Temminck's Manual, 

 which contained the Borealis I may then add, under this 



* Mr. Pelerin has prepared a cranium of the Polish Swan, and pointed out 

 to me the well-marked osteological differences which exist between it and the 

 head of the common Tame Swan ; thus further proving the distinction of the 

 Polish Swan, which I had named Cygnus immutabilis^ from the circumstance of 

 its producing white cygnets. 



