GROSS-BEAKS FISH. 35 



Three gross-beaks (loxia coccothraustes) ap- 

 peared some years ago in my fields, in the winter ; 

 one of which I shot. Since that, now and then, 

 one is occasionally seen in the same dead season 1 . 



A cross -bill (loxia curvirostrd) was killed last 

 year in this neighbourhood. 



Our streams, which are small, and rise only at 

 the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's- 

 head or miller V thumb (gobius fluviatilis capitatus), 

 the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguillaf, 



winter it retires to Asia and Africa, where it is also a perma- 

 nent resident. W. J. 



One specimen was shot in the county of Dublin, and ano- 

 ther in the county of Tiuperary, in 1828. LOUDON'S Maga- 

 zine. W. J. 



1 This also can only be placed as an occasional visitant, 

 appearing most frequently in the southern counties of Eng- 

 land, during hard and stormy winters. Mr. White (as we 

 learn from the Naturalist's Calendar and Miscellaneous Ob- 

 servations, published in a separate volume since the author's 

 decease by Dr. Aikin, and to which we shall occasionally 

 refer) met with this species at different times, and found it 

 feeding on the stones of damson plums, which still remained 

 on and about the trees in his garden. This species forms 

 the type of the genus coccothraustes. " On the 14th of May, 

 1828, the nest of a hawfinch was taken in an orchard belong- 

 ing to Mr. Waring, at Chelsfield, Kent. The old female was 

 shot on the nest, which was of a slovenly loose form, and 

 shallow, not being so deep as those of the greenfinch or lin- 

 net, and was placed against the large bough of an apple-tree, 

 about ten feet from the ground. It was composed externally 

 of dead twigs and a few roots, mixed with coarse white moss, 

 or lichen, and lined with horse-hair and a little fine dried 

 grass. The eggs were five in number, about the size of a 

 skylark's, but shorter and rounder, and spotted with bluish 

 ash and olive brown, some of the spots inclining to dusky or 

 blackish brown. The markings were variously distributed 

 on the different eggs." J. C. LOUDON, Jour, of Nat. Hist. 

 W. J. 



2 Mr. Yarrel of London, a most accurate and observant 

 naturalist, in a late number of the Zoological Journal, hints 



D2 



