ORDER TASSERES. 229 



to feed their young : and when the bill of the latter is grown 

 sufficiently strong to braise the grain, they no longer 

 show a preference for the insectivorous regimen. Gold- 

 finches, linnets, and canaries do not appear ever to touch 

 insects ; neither do the bullfinch and greenfinch ; they feed 

 their young with the tender seeds of anagallis, groundsil, 

 and other precocious plants. Those which are purely grani- 

 vorous always feed the young from their own crop, when the 

 food is macerated ; but the entomophagous kinds carry the 

 insect in the bill, or at the entrance of the oesophagus, to 

 their little ones. 



The species belonging to temperate and polar regions have 

 but one season of reproduction in the year ; but those of the 

 torrid zone have many ; some nestle in bushes, others on 

 trees, and jmany of the last give to their nests a very elegant 

 form. The house and hedge sparrows construct their nests 

 rudely, in the holes of walls and trees. The fringillse have 

 rarely but a single brood, having often two, and sometimes 

 even three or four, according to the length of the fine season 

 in the countries which they inhabit. All these birds, with the 

 exception of house and hedge sparrows and some foreign 

 species, have a song more or less agreeable, and, in certain of 

 them, it is scarcely inferior to that of the nightingale itself; 

 they all are easily accustomed to a state of captivity, and 

 many of them constitute a most attractive feature in aviaries. 



The Weavers (Ploceus), which, in the ^^Regne Animar 

 form the first subdivision of the fringillae, are placed in a 

 separate genus by M. Vieillot, and in the same family with 

 the orioles. Their bill is robust, advancing on the forehead 

 in the form of an acute angle ; it is longi- conical, convex 

 above, a little compressed at the sides, entire, nearly straight, 

 sharp, and sometimes a little gibbous. The lower mandible 

 has its edges bent inwards ; the nostrils are oblong, and 

 covered with a membrane ; the tongue is cartilaginous, and 

 fringed at the point; the wings have, in many species, a 



