180 FRINGILL1DJE. 



hither as a cage-bird, and the localities in which it is said to have 

 been procured are such as to raise a justifiable suspicion that 

 on each and every occasion the victim was an escaped captive. 

 The food of this species seems to consist of the seeds and 

 buds of many sorts of trees, but particulars on this point are 

 still wanting. Except when under the stress of winter- weather, 

 it invariably inhabits pine-forests, and hence w r e may perhaps 

 presume that its chief sustenance is obtained from conifers. 

 In summer however its diet appears to be occasionally varied 

 by insects. Schinz (Nester und Eier, pt. ii. p. 100, Taf. 35, 

 figg. 15, 16) described and figured two of its eggs, sent him by 

 Gravenhorst from Breslau, where, as appears from Thiene- 

 mann, they were laid in captivity. The writer last named 

 also figured the egg correctly and said (Fortpfl. ges. Yog. tab. 

 xxxvi. fig. 1, p. 418) that he had never compared but five 

 specimens thereof, which were from Labrador and Lapland 

 the latter possibly obtained by Zetterstedt, who, so far as is 

 yet known, must be deemed the earliest discoverer of the 

 mode of breeding of this species, having met with several of 

 its nests near Juckasjarvi, at the end of June 1821 (Resa 

 genom Swer. och Norrig. Lappmarker, i. p. 243). Nothing 

 however can be said to have been positively known by English- 

 men on the subject until 1855, when Wolley, after two years 

 of ineffectual search, succeeded in obtaining the nests and 

 eggs of the Pine-Grosbeak. The Editor well recollects these 

 treasures being for the first time brought to his late friend by 

 the trusty and intelligent Lapp who had been especially em- 

 ployed to look for them and had at last gained the reward 

 his efforts deserved.* 



* The story, told in 1808 by the elder Naumann (Naturg. Land- und Wasser- 

 Vogel nordl. Deutschl. Beitr. iii. pp. 18, 19) of his having observed this species, 

 twenty-two years before, breeding in his own coppice at Ziebigk in Anhalt, is 

 evidently fabulous. He first described the incident in 1797 (op. cit. i. pp. 61, 

 62) as referring to a Crossbill, which from the particulars he gives is just as un- 

 likely. In 1824 his son (Naturg. Vog. Deutschl. iv. p. 416) not unnaturally 

 stuck to his father's later opinion, but without corroborating it by any further 

 evidence of weight. Indeed he almost places his testimony out of court, since in 

 the same page he misquotes Bernhard Meyer's description (Vog. Liv- und Esthl. 

 p. 77) of the nest and eggs of the Greenfinch as those of the present bird, refer- 

 ring thereto in proof of his father's accurate observation ! Patticulars of Wolley's 



