472 EMBERIZID&. 
the continent from Chesterfield inlet to Behring’s Straits. 
The most southerly of its breeding stations im the New 
World, that has been recorded, is Southampton Island, in 
the sixty-second parallel, where Captam Lyons found a 
nest placed in the bosom of the corpse of an Esquimaux 
child. Its nest is composed of dry grass, neatly lmed with 
deer’s hair and a few feathers, and is generally fixed in 
the crevice of a rock, or in a loose pile of timber or stones. 
The eggs are greenish white, with a circle of irregular 
umber brown spots round the thick end, and numerous 
blotches of subdued lavender purple. On the 22nd July 
1826, in removing some drift timber lymg on the beach of 
Cape Parry, we discovered a nest on the ground contain- 
ing four young Snow birds. Care was taken not to injure 
them; and while we were seated at breakfast, at the dis- 
tance of only two or three feet, the parent birds made 
frequent visits to their offspring; at first timidly, but at 
length with the greatest confidence, and every time bring- 
ing grubs in their bills) The Snow Bunting does not 
hasten to the south on the approach of winter with the 
same speed as the other summer birds; but lingers about 
the forts and open places, picking up grass seeds, until the 
snow becomes deep; and it is only during the months of 
December and January that it retires to the southward 
of the Saskatchewan. It usually reaches that river again 
about the middle of February ; two months afterwards it 
attains the sixty-fifth parallel of latitude, and in the be- 
ginning of May it is found on the coast of the Polar Sea. 
At this period it feeds upon the buds of the Saaifraga ap- 
positifolia, one of the most early of the Arctic plants ; 
during winter its crop is generally filled with grass seeds. 
In the month of October, Wilson found a large flock run- 
ning over a bed of water plants, and feeding, not only on 
