THE COMMON BUNTING. 241 



Wilson, Audubon, and Dr. Eichardson give most interesting 

 accounts of the snow-bunting from personal observation in North 

 America. The last author had the gratification of meeting with the 

 bird in its breeding-haunt on that continent. Mr. Macgillivray 

 treats fully of it in Scotland, and Mr. Selby favours us with the 

 result of his observations on the species in the north of England. 



When ascending, in the month of July, above the perpetual snow- 

 line of the Alps of Switzerland, Mt. St. Gothard, Grimsel, Col de Four, 

 &c, and to the height of 11,000 feet, the snow-finch (Tringilla nivalis), 

 a bird which in size, marking, and note, reminded me at a little dis- 

 tance of the snow-bunting, was almost ever-present. Its feeble voice, 

 mingled occasionally with that of the alpine accentor {Accentor alpinus), 

 seemed in one sense, strangely out of unison with the stern grandeur of 

 the scenery, where rarely any other sound broke upon the ear, than 

 the rent of the glacier or the distant fall of the avalanche. 



The Lapland Bunting (Plectrophanes Lapponica), which has in a 

 very few instances been met with in England, has not yet been obtained 

 in Scotland (Jard., Macg.) or Ireland. 



THE COMMON BUNTING. 



Corn-Bunting. Briar-Bunting. 



Emberiza miliaria, Linn. 



Is found throughout the island, and is permanently resi- 

 dent. 



The Common Bunting, as it is called, is not by any means so 

 generally dispersed in Ireland, as the yellow bunting, and accord- 

 ingly, is not so common* or well known as that species, which 

 is one of the first birds that we become familiar with in child- 

 hood. The names of briar and com bunting applied to the bird 

 in the north, of Ireland are more correctly expressive ; in the south, 

 it is locally called corn-bird.f A few of these buntings were 



* Since the preceding was writteD, it has been observed that Sir Wm. Jardine 

 comments in a similar manner on the name, as applied to the bird in the south of 

 Scotland— Brit. Birds, vol. ii, p. 306. 



' f Mr. Poole. 



VOL. I. R 



