422 HISTORY OF THE 



quite common on the Magdalen Islands, especially on Bryon 

 Isle. Young birds were fully grown, and capable of taking 

 care of themselves. I think they must have been hatched in 

 the early spring, not later than the first of May. Young birds 

 have often been met with; very little, however, is known in re- 

 gard to their nesting habits. They are said by some writers to 

 lay five eggs, but the only reliable description I can find is the 

 following by Doctor Brewer, in ''North American Land Birds:" 



"A nest of this species (S. I. 13,452), taken at Fredricton, 

 New Brunswick, by Dr. A. Adams, in 1868, is deeply saucer- 

 shaped, and composed of a rather thin wall of fibrous pale green 

 lichens, encased on the outside with spruce twigs, and thinly 

 lined with coarse hairs and fine shreds of inner, bark. Its ex- 

 ternal diameter is a little less than four inches, the rim being 

 almost perfectly circular; the cavity is an inch and a half deep 

 by two and a half broad. 



The one egg is pale blue, the large end rather thickly spat- 

 tered with fine dots of black and ashy lilac; is regularly or 

 rather slightly elongated oval, the smaller end rather obtuse. 

 It measures .80 of an inch in length by .56 in breadth. 



GENUS ACANTHIS BECHSTEIN. 



"Bill very short, conical, acutely pointed, the outline sometimes concave; 

 the commissure straight; the base of the upper mandible and the nostrils con- 

 cealed by stiff, appressed, bristly feathers; middle of the mandible having sev- 

 eral ridges parallel with the culmeii. Inner lateral toe rather the longer, its 

 claw reaching the middle of the middle claw; the hind toe rather longer, its claw 

 longer than the digital portion. Wings very long, reaching the middle of the 

 tail; second quill a little longer than the first and third. Tail deeply forked." 



Acanthis linaria (LINN.). 



REDPOLL. 

 PLATE XXVII. 



A rare winter visitant. 



In the early part of the winter, I think of 1861, I saw at 

 Neosho Falls, in my brother's yard, a flock of at least twenty, 

 feeding on a pile of manure from the horse stable. It was an 

 extremely cold day and the ground covered with snow. I ran 

 for the gun, but before I returned they were gone. In January, 



