198 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



set to work searching for food. They mn swiftly and gracefully, 

 and are wonderfully expert in extracting the seeds of weeds, such 

 as broomweed, which are too tall for them to reach while stand- 

 ing on the ground. Placing themselves below the coveted food, 

 they take little leaps, at each effort withdrawing a seed so 

 expertly that not a movement of the plant can be detected. 

 During severe weather I have seen these birds seeking for stray 

 pickings in the streets of Corsicana, along with shore larks. So 

 numerous are they at some seasons, that I have killed sixty- 

 three longspurs at one shot, fifty-eight of which belonged to this 

 species. 



Centrophanes pictus (Swains.) Smith's Longspur. — These 

 birds, which differ from their relatives in their marked preference 

 for upland dry stretches of prairie, arrive with us during the 

 third week of November, and soon become common in all 

 suitable localities. They do not go in large flocks, but rather in 

 pairs and family parties, and frequent the edges of roads and 

 bare sandy places, diversified with tussocks of coarse grass, such 

 as Neocorys spraguei haunts. Even when a considerable number 

 are in the same spot, they do not feed or fly together, but each takes 

 his own course ; they rise with a quick, jerky, irregular flight to 

 a considerable height, and after a few minutes' circling in a 

 vague and uncertain manner, drop to the ground like a stone, 

 and immediately conceal themselves in or behind the nearest 

 tuft of herbage so completely that it is quite impossible for the 

 eye to distinguish them, and here they lie so close as almost to 

 allow themselves to be trodden upon ; when rising, they utter a 

 quick musical twitter. They have all left this district by the 

 middle of March. This species seems to live entirely upon the 

 seeds of various grasses ; it is never found upon cultivated lands. 



Centrophanes ornatus (Towns.) Chesnut-coUared Longspur. 

 — I met with this beautiful species first in the last week of January, 

 1880, when I obtained a male from a flock of Rhynchophanes 

 maccowni. From this time I saw no more until the beginning of 

 April, when they suddenly appeared in large flocks, frequenting 

 only the most sandy and barren parts of the prairie, and feeding 

 indiscriminately on seeds and insects. Unlike the last species, 

 they keep very close together while feeding, the whole flock 

 moving in the same direction, and as those from the hindmost 



