MARCH 69 



fine feather, was shot out of a flock of five or six, near 

 Keynsham, in Somerset, and another out of a small 

 flock of the commoner kind at Enniskillen. 



There is a peculiarity in the plumage of this showy 

 bird which often has caused disappointment to col- 

 lectors, and occasionally brings indoor naturalists to 

 ludicrous disaster. The glowing crimson of the head, 

 neck, and shoulders fades rapidly after death, so that 

 the stuffed crossbills in museums give a very misleading 

 idea of the appearance of the living creature. See how 

 neatly Mr. J. W. Tutt has walked into this trap in his 

 Chats about British Birds lately published. It is one 

 of a kind of book with which we are all painfully 

 familiar, written up to illustrations which have done 

 duty many times before. 



'The Common Crossbill,' says this great authority, 'is a 

 remarkable bird ; . . . many have doubted that it nested in 

 the British Islands, although the presence of very young 

 birds in their striking juvenile plumage of dark green has 

 been very strong prima facie evidence of their having done 

 so. As they get older, they become of a dull brown colour, 

 but when they get the adult plumage are of a quite bright greenish- 

 yellow mixed with brown and purer yellow.' 



Good Mr. Tutt! he has described very fairly the 

 appearance of the dusty specimen from which this 

 portrait was drawn; but apparently his reading has 

 not extended to Longfellow's version of Mosen's poem, 

 which preserves the monkish legend of the crossbill, 

 twisting its beak by trying to wrench out the nails 

 that held the dying Saviour to the cross, and ever- 



