MEALY REDPOLE. 559 
T am, however, enabled to supply from another quarter. 
Mr. Pelerm, a Naturalist, living in Great Russell Street, 
who has prepared for himself an extensive collection of the 
crania and skeletons of animals, has most freely allowed me 
the use of a cranium of each of our Redpoles from which 
the representations forming the subject of the vignette at 
the end of the account of the next Redpole were carefully 
drawn; where, in addition to the side and back view of 
each, the double parallel lines exhibit at once the compa- 
rative length and breadth of each head.* 
In the Museum at Saffron Walden, there is a male of the 
Mealy Redpole, which was killed in that neighbourhood in 
May 1836, and one shot by Mr. Pelerin at Oundle was 
sufficiently advanced in its spring plumage to have acquired 
a, considerable portion of red colour on the breast ; the oc 
currence of this species, for such I consider it, 1s, however, 
most frequent in winter; many specimens have been ob- 
tamed in England, and some in Scotland. Its habits 
throughout the year are probably very similar to those of 
the Little Common Redpole next to be described, and with 
which it has frequently been confounded. Its food is the 
seeds of various forest trees. 
Thinking it not improbable that the Mealy Redpole, 
named canescens by Mr. Gould, as here quoted, may be the 
same bird as that which has been called Borealis by Messrs. 
Temminck and P. Roux,—the eleventh part of Mr. Gould’s 
Birds of Europe having been published, I believe, before the 
appearance of the third part of M. Temminck’s Manual, 
which contained the Borealis—I may then add, under this 
* Mr. Pelerin has prepared a cranium of the Polish Swan, and pointed out 
to me the well-marked osteological differences which exist between it and the 
head of the common Tame Swan; thus further proving the distinction of the 
Polish Swan, which I had named Cygnus immutabilis, from the circumstance of 
its producing white eygnets. 
