BRITISH BIRDS. 235 



to be seen. Its principal food is said to be the 

 -seeds of the pine tree; it is observed to hold the 

 cone in one claw like the Parrot, and when kept in 

 a cage, has all the actions of that bird, climbing, 

 by means of its hooked bill, from the lower to the 

 upper bars of its cage. From its mode of scramb- 

 ling, and the beauty of its colours, it has been 

 called by some the German Parrot. The female is 

 said to begin to build as early as January; she 

 places her nest under the bare branches of the 

 pine, fixing it with the resinous matter which 

 exudes from that tree, and besmearing it on the 

 outside with the same substance, so that the melted 

 .snow or rain cannot penetrate it. 



adapted by nature, for they turn back, and strike one point upon the 

 other, so as to show the extremity of the hooks, or rather of the 

 transverse sickles, one turned past the other. Indeed (and what is a 

 rare thing to be observed) in the males the hooked point of the 

 upper bill is curved downwards upon the lower; whereas in the 

 female the inferior point bends upwards upon the other. The size of 

 the body is about that of the Linnet or Bullfinch. The female 

 is of the colour of the female Bullfinch. The males have very 

 strong and very beautiful feathers, most part of the breast, the 

 back, and the head being either of a pleasing yellow or an elegant 

 red. Nobody had seen such birds, or had heard of them from the 

 oldest persons; and what in them is chiefly to be admired, they were 

 so tame, gentle, and innocent, that they seemed to have flown hither 

 from some desert wholly uninhabited by man, for they were not 

 affrighted till they had been once driven off. They suffered them- 

 selves patiently to be attacked with slings and cross-bows, never 

 thinking of flying off till some of them, stricken by stones, or apples, 

 or leaden bullets, fell dead from the trees. Their flesh was suffi- 

 ciently savoury and delicate. Finally, whether they came here in 

 quest of the food they lived upon or not, as soon as the apples 

 were gone they all disappeared, but no one knows whither they 

 went." Vit. 2 Offar., &c., p. 262. 



