174 LITTLE BUNTING. 



to Blasius, in Central Europe. The specimen from which Schlegel 

 drew his lengthened description in the Revue Critique, was captured 

 in the neigbourhood of Leyden, on the 18th. of November, 1842. It 

 is mentioned by Professor Blasius and Herr Gatke among the birds 

 found frequently in Heligoland. Messrs. Elwes and Buckley include 

 it in the Birds of Turkey, ("Ibis," 1870), as a rather rare winter 

 visitor to the Bosphorus. It is said by Pallas to be very common 

 near mountain rivers in the Dauria, and is reported by Mr. E,. Swinhoe 

 as occurring in occasional flocks in Amoy (China) during the winter. — 

 ("Ibis," vol. ii, p. 61.) It also occurs in India, according to Jerdon, 

 and Deputy Surgeon-General Stewart informs me that he found it 

 once in 1861 in a valley at the foot of the Himalaya, where it had 

 been driven down by the snow from the mountains. He never saw 

 it anywhere else in India. A single specimen is recorded as having 

 occurred at Brighton,* in the "Ibis," for 1865, p. 113. 



It is hardly necessary to enter into any discussion about the specific 

 identity of this bird, after the very clear and convincing remarks of 

 Professor Blasius, which I published in the notice of E. rustica. M. 

 de Selys-Longchamps expressed a doubt, in a letter to Degland, about 

 the identity of Schlegel's sjjecimen with the bird described by Pallas, 

 and referred it rather to the female of E. fucata. Upon this Degland 

 remarks: — "Having seen in the Museum of Leyden, the Emberiza 

 pusilla of M. Schlegel, I cannot, with my distinguished friend, refer 

 it to E.fucata; it has not the same kind of beak. This organ, instead 

 of being convex above, and a little bent, is straight and awl-shaped, 

 pointed and slightly reversed at its tip. Its plumage is decidedly 

 different." 



Bonaparte, in his "Conspectus of European Birds," says of this 

 species: — "It is a good species of Siberia, which has been taken acci- 

 dentally even in Italy; that of Schlegel is the true one, and neither of 

 the two figures in my Italian fauna ought to be referred to it." 



Dr. Leopold von Schrenck, in his "Vogel Amurlandes," p. 289, 

 thus writes of this bird: — "The only specimen of this small Bunting 

 which we brought home I shot on the 18th. of September, on the 

 Upper Amoor, a little below the mouth of the Oldoi. It was a 

 female that quite agreed with Pallas's description. In the autumn 

 dress the feathers of the head have rust yellow edges, which make 

 both the black side stripes and rust-coloured middle stripe somewhat 

 indistinct, and only showing in spots. I found a nest of this Bunting 

 in the Lower Amoorland, in a scanty part of the pine forest between 

 the Lake of Kidsi and the sea-coast. It lay on the ground among 

 moor-tussocks, between which was still seen the remains of snow, and 



