CIRL-BUNTING. 55 



in the wing, and the sixth is fully one-eighth of an inch 

 shorter than the fifth. 



The female wants the black and the bright yellow stripes 

 on the head and throat, having but a pale yellow line over 

 the eye ; the upper surface of the head and body is streaked 

 longitudinally with black on the dull olive of the one and 

 the reddish-brown of the other ; the lower surface of the 

 body is similarly streaked with black on a dull and dingy 

 yellow. 



Young birds very closely resemble adult females, but all 

 trace of yellow is wanting, and the plumage generally has 

 a tinge of buff. 



English naturalists are greatly indebted to Montagu for 

 his careful and patient investigation of various subjects, and 

 extreme exactness of observation, which enabled him to 

 produce several valuable communications, and make many 

 interesting additions to British Zoology. His discrimination 

 of the species of Harrier which, both here and on the Con- 

 tinent, now bears his name has been already briefly men- 

 tioned (vol. i. page 138), and must always be regarded as a 

 fact of great interest and importance, while his other 

 ornithological discoveries, hardly if at all inferior to it, will 

 be duly recorded in the progress of this work. It may be 

 remarked that they are nearly all of a very different kind 

 from those which nowadays pass as such the recognition, 

 namely, more by accident than by anything else, of various 

 birds of foreign origin which from time to time visit these 

 islands. Montagu perhaps stands alone in one curious par- 

 ticular. Being essentially a British naturalist it was his 

 fortune to be the first to describe an exotic species, the 

 American Bittern, from an example which had strayed, as 

 the species still occasionally strays, to England. His 

 ' Ornithological Dictionary' remains an enduring monument 

 of his labours, though the alphabetical arrangement of the 

 work and the want of any systematic key to it impairs 

 its utility to beginners. A list of his many publications 

 may be found in several bibliographical works, and a brief 

 memoir of their author, who died June 20th, 1815, in 



