26 EMBERIZID^. 



the case to some extent in England at any rate on the 

 east coast. In Ireland, says Thompson, it is a resident 

 distributed over the whole island, which from the prevailing 

 humidity is peculiarly well suited to it. 



It is found in swampy ground over almost the whole of 

 continental Europe from the neighbourhood of the North 

 Cape to the Straits of Gibraltar, and apparently in all the 

 principal islands of the Mediterranean as far as Crete. It 

 occurs too in the neighbourhood of Tangier, and, according 

 to Loche, inhabits all three of the provinces of Algeria, but 

 from the silence on the subject of several other observers in 

 that country it would seem not to be plentiful there, and it 

 is not to be traced further to the eastward in Africa. As 

 to the determination of its range in Asia great difficulty at 

 present exists, for there is certainly a second, if not a third, 

 form of Eeed-Bunting found in many parts of Siberia, and 

 the Russian ornithologists do not agree with regard to the 

 rank to be assigned to either or both. It would seem, 

 however, that a form quite indistinguishable from our own 

 occurs throughout the south-western portion of the Russian 

 dominions in Asia, and that this was also found by Dr. 

 Severzov in Turkestan. Mr. Hume too (Ibis, 1869, p. 355) 

 has obtained it from near Badlee, some thirty miles to the 

 south of Delhi, and the identity of the species with the 

 European bird was subsequently confirmed by the late M. 

 Jules Verreaux, though the Reed-Bunting had been hitherto 

 unknown in India. 



The bill is dusky brown above, paler beneath : irides 

 hazel : the adult male in breeding-plumage has the whole of 

 the head jet-black, bounded by a white collar, which descends 

 to the breast ; from near the corner of the gape a white stripe 

 passes backwards below the ear-coverts and joins a broad 

 white nuqhal collar, which is succeeded by a narrow band 

 of iron-grey and dull black ; back and wing-coverts deep 

 brownish-black, each feather broadly bordered with bright bay 

 and ochreous, the former so predominating on the upper 

 wing-coverts that they seem to be wholly of that colour ; the 

 wing- quills dark brown, the primaries with a narrow margin 



