134 FRINGILLIDyE. 



phical range be considered a variety or race of the present 

 bird, which is unquestionably the Fringilla linaria of Lin- 

 naeus and the form to which this epithet properly belongs, 

 though authors, through imperfect knowledge, have very 

 generally misapplied it to the other. The difference between 

 the two was first clearly shewn by Yieillot,* who in an 

 admirable paper read before the Academy of Sciences of 

 Turin, July 7th, 1816, very accurately described them under 

 the respective names of Linaria borealis and L. rufescens, 

 and rightly identified the former with the Linnaean F. linaria 

 (Mem. Accad. Sc. Torino, xxiii. p. 199). This communica- 

 tion, perhaps from the discredit cast upon it by Temminck, 

 has been much neglected, and to the zoologist last named is 

 certainly due the confusion that long existed on the subject, 

 for he at first refused to recognize the distinctness of the two 

 forms, and when at last compelled by evidence to do so, he 

 wrongly identified the smaller and to him best-known with 

 the Linnaean linaria. Temminck' s faulty course was unfortu- 

 nately followed by nearly all his contemporaries, and matters 

 were further complicated by a third form of Redpoll being 

 confounded by him with the larger of the two that inhabit 

 Western Europe. 



The Mealy Redpoll has doubtless always been, as it still 

 is, an irregular visitor to Great Britain, and, under this name 

 or that of Stone-Redpoll, is believed to have been long dis- 

 criminated by our birdcatchers ; but Selby in 1825 seems to 

 have first f published any indication of its occurrence in this 

 country (111. Br. Orn. i. p. 280, note, pi. liii.** fig. 2), and 

 he figured, from Jardine's collection, a specimen shot -near 

 Edinburgh as the large variety of the Lesser Redpoll already 

 spoken of by Temminck. Six years later Selby ranked it 

 as a distinct species (Trans. N. H. Soc. Northumb. &c. i. 

 p. 263) in his catalogue of the birds of Northumberland and 



* It had however been recognized by De Montbeillard who in the last century 

 spoke of the two birds, the Sizerin and the Cabaret, as distinct, though, as 

 might be expected, he made hopeless confusion of such of their synonyms as then 

 existed. 



t Iii former editions of the present work Walcott's figure and description have 

 been referred to the Mealy Redpoll but, as the Editor thinks, erroneously. 



