212 FRINGILLID.E. 



his Crucirostra bifasciata was not exactly the same as 

 Gloger's Loxia tcenioptera, but wherein the distinction lay 

 would puzzle the clearest heads, and Gloger himself several 

 years afterwards, though retaining the name he had before 

 given, reverted to the old notion of the specific identity of 

 the European and American birds. The difference between 

 them will in due time be shewn. 



The instances in which the present form can be confi- 

 dently stated to have occurred in Britain amount to about 

 half-a-dozen, but in some of them small flocks were noticed, 

 so that considerably more than that number of specimens 

 has been obtained.* The earliest on record is that of a 

 female shot at Grenville near Belfast, January* llth, 1802, 

 as recorded by Templeton in a letter to Dawson Turner 

 (Trans. Linn. Soc. vii. p. 309). The specimen indeed 

 seems to have perished, but a coloured drawing of it was 

 fortunately preserved, and helped Thompson (B. Irel. i. p. 



* Of instances in which " white-winged Crossbills" are said to have occurred 

 without the distinction between the Nearctic and Palsearctic forms being ob- 

 served or capable of later determination the following may be noted: (1) 

 Latham in a contribution to the posthumous edition (1812) of Pennant's 

 'British Zoology' (i. p. 428) says that, before knowing o.f the Irish specimen 

 mentioned in the text, he had been informed of the bird having been met with 

 in Scotland, but the report was too uncertain for him to notice ; (2) Mr. 

 Edward writing in 1859 (Zool. p. 6631) declared that one stormy winter about 

 fifty years before a large flock appeared at Banff ; (3) Hoy informed the Author 

 that, some time prior to 1839, Mr. Seaman of Ipswich had shot one apparently 

 near that town ; (4) Bury in 1844 said (Zool. p. 643) he had been told of a pair 

 of Crossbills with white bars on their wings having been obtained about six 

 years before in the Isle of Wight ; (5) the late Archibald Jerdon, as accurate an 

 observer as his more distinguished brother, stated (Zool. p. 221) that he examined 

 one, apparently a hen, shot in February, 1841, near Bonjedward in Roxburgh- 

 shire ; (6) in March 1845, Mr. J. Cooper had one alive which was caught near 

 Birmingham, as Strickland informed the Author ; (7) Mr. R. J. Bell mentions 

 (Zool. p. 1247) a hen shot, while accompanying Fieldfares, at Mickleover near 

 Derby in November 1845 ; (8) Salmon, in a contribution to Newman's ' Letters 

 of Rusticus', published in 1849 (p. 158), notices a cock bird shot in Unsted 

 Wood, Surrey, and then belonging to Mr. Nicholson of Waverley Abbey; (9) 

 Mr. Sterland says that four were shot at Edwinstowe, in Nottinghamshire, in 

 the spring of 1849; and (10) Mr. Prideaux in 1852 recorded (Zool. 3474) one 

 at Taunton, without giving any date for it. Several of these particulars having 

 hitherto been erroneously given by various authors, the foregoing list, which, 

 so far as it goes, is believed to be accurate, may be found useful. 



