264 FRINGILLID.E. 



The goldfinch is treated of in a very interesting manner in the 

 Journal of a Naturalist. This bird has come under my notice, 

 when travelling in Holland and Switzerland. 



THE SISKIN. 

 Aberdevine. 



Carduelis spinus, Linn, (sp.) 

 Fringilla „ 



Can only be noted positively as an occasional winter 

 visitant. 



Templeton, in his Catalogue of the Vertebrate Animals of Ireland, 

 calls this bird a " rare visitant," and to my ornithological friends 

 and myself, it is known only as a winter bird of passage, resorting 

 at uncertain intervals to this island. Rutty, in Ms Natural His- 

 tory of Dublin (1772), says, that siskins "come to us in the 

 beginning of winter, and go away in the beginning of spring," 

 implying their regular periodical appearance. That they may oc- 

 casionally even breed in some parts of the county of Wicklow, 

 and certain suitable localities in the north, is not improbable. 



I first saw this species in a wild state, in the brickfields, west 

 of Belfast, in the winter of 1826 or 1827, probably the latter, as 

 in that year, siskins were met with, and for the first time, by Sir 

 Wm. Jardine, in Dumfries-shire. On November the 22nd, 1828, 

 one was shot near Belfast, as it was regaling on a thistle, and in 

 March, 1829, eight or nine were observed in our Botanic Garden, 

 busily engaged in feeding among the branches of some larch-firs 

 then partially in leaf. Early in 1835, many, both of old and 

 young, taken alive near the town of Antrim, were brought to Bel- 

 fast for sale. One shown to me, had been killed with a stone 

 about that time out of a flock of perhaps thirty, near Ballymena, in 

 the same county. . On the Christmas-day of that year, nearly 

 twenty were seen feeding together on thistles in the county of 

 Down; on the 25th of February, 1836, I met with a couple 

 (one of which was an adult male) on the wooded banks of the 



