82



very kindly responded, whilst my old friend, Mr. Abrahams, sent

me birds so rapidly for a week or two, that I could not find time

to mount them, and had to cry for quarter. In the meanwhile I

carefully mounted and noted the few perfect examples which

dropped off in my own collection.


Having gradually accumulated a mass of material, I at

length decided to sit down and sort it into some kind of order

with a view to sexual comparison, and, to my horror, I discover

that after all this collecting and labour of mounting, the bulk of

my material is practically worthless : this will become evident

when I enumerate the finch-wings in my possession in the order

in which the birds appear in my “ Foreign Finches in Captivity


Serinus icterus, male; Alario cilario, male; Chrysomitris

spinus, male; C. tristis, female; Cyanospiza ciris, male; Cardinalis

cardinalis , male ; Spermopliila albigularis, female; S. gutturalis,

female. Thus, in the true finches, I discovered that I only

possessed one sex of any of the species, excepting of our Eng¬

lish Sparrow and Einnet, which are easily separable, both by the

pattern and form of their wings.


In the Waxbills I am better off: Stictospiza formosci,

female ; Sporceginthus melpodus, female ; A. amandava, male ;

Lagonostida minima, and L. rufo-pida, males only ; L. ccerulescens,

both sexes; Estrilda phoenicotis, both sexes (but not in good

order) ; E. cinerea, male ; Ncochmia phaeton , female ; Pytelia

phce 7 iicoptera, male. Therefore I possess wings of both sexes in

L. ccerulescens — the Eavender-finch, and E. phamicotis —the

Cordon-bleu, and I find the following differences :—In the male

Eavender-finch the third and following primaries («) are some¬

what longer than in the female, and in the Cordon-bleu the

second to the sixth primaries are considerably longer than in the

female, giving a distinctly more elongated aspect to the wing.


In the Grass-finches I have male wings only of Poephila

mirabilis, worn female wings of Steganopleura guttata ; but both

sexes of Tce?iiopygia castanotis : here again the second to the

fifth primaries are much longer in the male than in the female,

rendering the entire wing decidedly longer: in Aidemosyne ca?itans

I only possess female wings, and, excepting in the case of the

Bengalee (which is variable) I only possess one sex in the wings

of any Mannikin, Whydah, or Weaver.


It will thus be seen that although I have gradually

accumulated much material, hardly any of it proves to be



(a). I, of course, count tlie minute first primary.



