COMMON CROSSBILL. 9 



fully built ; the eggs also were not unlike those of that 

 bird, but larger ; they, however, deserted them without 

 making any attempt at incubation, although I believe 

 they were perfectly undisturbed. About the same time, 

 a pair also built their nest in a garden in this town, 

 on an apple-tree, but were shot before they had completed 

 it." A more conclusive instance has been briefly referred to 

 by M. Necker in his valuable Memoir of the Birds of 

 Geneva, in which it is stated that a nest was made in 

 a fir, the materials were grass, moss, and portions of fir ; 

 the nest contained three young ones, covered with feathers, 

 which were dark green, with blackish longitudinal marks ; 

 the mandibles not then crossed, but like those of a young 

 Greenfinch ; the parent male, red ; the female green : the 

 voice a single sharp note, frequently repeated, and also 

 when flying from one tree to another; all their actions 

 very paroquet like. Such is the substance of the brief 

 account supplied by M. Necker ; and the fact that the 

 mandibles are not crossed over till the bird is obliged to 

 seek its own living, exhibits one of those beautiful pro- 

 visions of Nature, under which the formative process re- 

 mains suspended till the age and necessities of the animal 

 require the particular development. 



On the European continent, the Crossbills visit Spain 

 and Genoa, and are seldom seen further south, but have 

 occasionally been taken in Sicily. They inhabit the Alps 

 and Pyrenees, the pine forests of Switzerland and Ger- 

 many, Poland, Eussia, Siberia, and eastward over Asia, even 

 to Japan* They inhabit also Denmark, Norway, and 

 Sweden, where Professor Nilsson says they build their 

 nests on the uppermost branches of firs in the winter months. 

 M. Sundeval, a Naturalist of Stockholm, who accompanied 

 a recent expedition to North Cape, believes that the 



